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SWEETHEART GWEN 


A WELSH IDYLL 


BY / 

WILLIAM TIREBUCK 

1 ) 

AUTHOR OF “DORRIE,” “ ST. MARGARET,” ETC. 




( %h, 0 1093 

NEWT YORK 

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO 

15 EAST SIXTEENTH STREET 

1893 


COPYRIGHT, 1893, 

By LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO 


PRESS OF 

EDWARD O. JENKINS’ SON, 
NEW YORK. 


TO 


Mistcx 


THE CRITIC ON THE HEARTH. 



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CONTENTS 


PART I. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. A Change of Air. ...... i 

II. Bryn-nant. 7 

III. Mark and Gwen. 21 

IV. The Sound from the Dairy. . . 30 

V. A Question of Toilet. - - . - 36 

VI. Mishaps. 45 

VII. Gwen at Her Ease. 55 

VIII. A Crisis. 62 

IX. The Crisis Continued. - ^ - 78 

X. An Adventure. ----- 98 

XI. Welsh Courting. ----- 107 

XII. Market Day. ----- 122 

XIII. If not Friends— Foes then. - - - 135 

XIV. Casting out the Devil. - - - 144 

XV. Word from Bryn-nant. - - - - 153 

XVI. Curds and Whey. - - . . 167 

XVII. Performances. - i 75 

XVIII. Home. - 184 

PART II. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. An Eventful Time. 191 

H. Gwen’s Surrender. - - - - 199 

HI. What Mark Did. - - - - - 214 

IV. Dreams Realized. - - - - 229 

PART HI. 

PAGE 

249 


A Final Confession. 








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SWEETHEART GWEN, 


CHAPTER I. 

A CHANGE OF AIR. 

When Mark was about five — 5 a.m. in the 
morning of life — he was sent from Liverpool 
to his grandmother’s farm, Bryn Nant, in the 
verdant Vale of Clwyd in North Wales. He 
arrived at the Foryd, the landing place for 
passengers by the Rhyl Packet, at night, and 
was transferred to the enthusiastic care of his 
bonny Auntie Bet. There was a springless 
cart in waiting, and in view of five miles of 
uneven roads, for Mark’s comfort the old cart 
was upholstered with straw, sacks — and his 
Auntie Bet. She herself sat packed in straw 
with her back against the tail-board, and was 


2 


5 WEE THEAR T G WEN, 


like an automatic bed-chair that could cast its 
shawled arms around Mark and lock him in 
a nest of warmth. On the journey, the head 
of the chair sometimes leaned over Mark and 
asked him if he felt warm and cooed Welsh 
croonings of endearment so near his ear that 
the buzzing vibrating voice tickled him. 

On the front of the cart, guiding the horse 
Boxor between the hedges and ditches, now 
under the gloom of oaks and now by the 
yielding pillars of poplars, was Bet’s brother 
David, known as Darve. Boxor several times 
gave a start and made off at a heavy jolting 
agricultural trot, upsetting Bet and Mark out 
of their coziness, and allowing the night air 
to creep in between the gaps in the shawl. 

Once Boxor jolted too much, and Darve 
rose from his seat and balancing himself with 
his foot on the shaft, he whirled the spare 
end of the reins in the air and swooped it 
undei Boxor s flank to a growling accompa- 


A CHANGE OF AIR. 3 

niment of forcible Welsh. Off Boxor went 
at a heavy-hoofed gallop. Darve was thrown 
back on his seat, and passionately muttering 
that Ae would put the brute through its pac- 
ings if it shewed any of its pranks, he rose to 
lash Boxor again. 

“ Doan’t ! * Darve, lad,” called sister Bet in 
rather weak English, but with a marked and 
melodious Welsh accent. “ Boxor is only 
wish for home. Tis late out of bed for him. 
Doan’t, doan’t lad ! ... . Wo Boxor ; good 
Boxor. Wo my beauty,” she said soothingly 
to the galloping horse, as if through Darve’s 
back. 

“ I’ll beauty him ! I’ll give him wish for 
home !” — and Darve lashed at him agfain. 

'‘Well doant ! — you are hard-hearted on 
the thing ; and see, you fright Mark here, to 


* The mongrel English in Sweetheart Gwen is given as 
mongrel German or French, or as any English dialect, 
might be given. 


4 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


cry. Never mind, Mark, my boy — Uncle 
Darve is not hurt the horse. Well now, 
doan’t David man, or I come and drive 
myself ! ” 

“ Drive deevil ! ” said Darve. 

Well yes indeed, drive you / '' replied 
Bet, just as one wheel of the cart sank in 
the soft rim of a ditch, while the thick low 
branches of a spreading oak almost swept 
Darve off his seat into the body of the cart ; 
and all came to a stand. ‘‘ Serve you well !” 
cried Bet good-humouredly, laughing under 
the rustling leaves of the drooping branches ; 
and Darve could not help but laugh too. 
“ Serve you well. You have lash for lash. 
Mark ! you are right ? You have no hurts ? 
Well done ! This is fun for to tell Nain ! 
(Grandmother.)” 

Darve still laughing groped his way over 
the side of the cart, went up to Boxor, patted 
its neck, examined its limbs, and paid a visit 


A CHANGE OF AIR. 


5 


of inspection to the wheel half down the 
ditch. 

‘‘ Bet, you will have to mount out,” he 
called. 

“No indeed ; — Bet and Mark will not,” 
was the muffled reply under the branches. 

- WeW—yesr 

“Well — no. I am comfortable warm here ; 
— beside I must come through a wood and 
scratch my face, and Mark’s, for ^ou. No 
indeed. Take you Boxor by the head to the 
road, lad, and he pull us in quicksticks.” 

“ But the wheel is half spokes in the ditch, 
woman.” 

“ Well, get it half spokes out, man, and it 
will be right ; and we are near Blue Hand 
Inn, as good as home in few minutes.” 

“ Oh, diawl (Devil) ! ” grumbled Darve go- 
ing to Boxor’s head. “ Come out of this 
you fooled-foot of a thing,” he said twitching 
the rein, and Boxor in about four moves had 


6 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


the cart in the middle of the road again, 
leaving the rustling branches swaying to and 
fro in the darkness. 

Darve did not mount his seat again, but 
walked by Boxor’s head, and in a short time 
the cart with its final rolls and jolts passed 
from a dark road into a darker farm yard. 


CHAPTER II. 


BRYN-NANT. 

The transition from the road to the farm 
yard was like passing from dusk into night, 
and yet out of the night came the sweet 
smell of a shippon, occasional wafts of smoke 
from a fire of wood, and the friendly bark of 
a dog. Two dimly-lighted windows became 
visible, then an opened door gaped with light 
on the darkness, and a tall old woman with 
her head in a shawl came out of the doorway 
light and stood in the dark with the erratic 
flash of a lantern about her. 

“ Have you got him. Bet the old woman 
eagerly asked in Welsh, holding the lantern 
towards the cart. 

“ Yes, mother.” 

“ Let me have him then. Quick ! Come 

( 7 ) 


8 


5 IV£'E THEAR T G WEN. 


to Nain, Mark, my boy. Come to Nain !” 
she said putting down the lantern and hold- 
ing out her arms. Mark was handed to her. 
“ And how are you, my boy ?” she said kiss- 
ing him on one cheek. My own Mareea’s 
(Maria’s) own boy! How are you?” she 
repeated, kissing him on the other cheek. 
*'Cold and tired are you ? That naughty old 
cart shaking my Mark ! Come in, come in. 
Come Bet, my girl, doan’t stay in the night 
out there. Darve will see Boxor to right.” 

Nain and Mark passed from the chilly 
darkness into the warmth of a small kitchen 
where a little table was laid with milk and 
dark bread, and butter, opposite an open fire- 
place. The wood fire flared a brightness 
along the rafters of the whitewashed ceiling 
where sage and other herbs, old horse-shoes 
and bits, reserves of bacon, and even Nain’s 
Sunday boots, were hung. 

Nain quickly guided Mark between the 


BRYN-NANT. 


9 

shining black oak settle and the table, to the 
fire. She put on another log of wood, dis- 
turbed the grey silent ashes, and sitting on a 
chair she took the boy on her knee. Off 
went his cap ; off went his little coat ; off 
his shoes and stockings, and giving the fire 
another poke until the new block sent up a 
triumphal blaze, Nain toasted her hand at the 
fire and rubbed Mark’s plump little legs and 
feet into a most comfortable warmth. 

Whenever she looked at Mark or asked 
him questions (which he never answered) 
there came a smiling light in the bright 
gipsy black eyes, a smiling curve along the 
lips, and smiling warm tints to her olive 
cheeks. Once as she gazed at Mark’s brown 
hair, brown eyes and chubby features, she 
suddenly kissed the boy and before lifting 
her head again she pressed her eyelids on 
one of the ends of her dark little Welsh wool 
shoulder shawl. 


lO 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


When Bet had closed the door and taken 
off her things she also approached the fire, 
kneeling on the great iron fender to warm 
herself and to look at Mark. She looked at 
him several times, her eyes returning after 
each look, to gaze into the fire. Looking at 
him again, however, she at last said : 

“ Well, dear me. Mam anwyl (Mother dear) 
isn’t this boy like — poor I wan ?” 

The more I look at him, Bet ! He’s the 
very — ” Nain shook her head in speechless 
pain, and nodded it up and down. 

“How zs our Iwan?” asked Bet, turning 
to the fire, almost afraid to hear about her in- 
valid brother. 

“ 111, ill, girl ; very ill. Bad as bad can be.” 

Bet half rose, and Nain said, “ Doan’t you 
go to him yet, my girl. Gwen is come this 
afternoon and is with him. I am think of 
your clothes from the night’s air. They 
would give chill to his room, and he is so ten- 


BR VN-NANT. 


I 


der with his breath. Warm yourself first, Bet. 
Aye, aye, bad ; — poor lad ! ” 

Bet moved still closer to the fire, warming 
her hands, her sleeves, and her skirt. She 
glanced once more at Mark. The same sort 
of tears that had suffused her Mother’s eyes, 
slowly suffused hers, and in a pain that was 
only half conquered. Bet thr^w her arms 
around Mark and kissed him. “The very 
look, Mother,” she said, as the lifted latch of 
the door was heard. 

It was Darve. Bet slyly dried her eyes, 
and Nain forced herself to look cheerful. 

“ Here’s Uncle Davith ! ” said Nain exult- 
ingly to Mark. “ Let Davith come to the 
fire. Bet ” — and Bet rose from the fender and 
took a chair on the right. Darve took off his 
cap and his coat and came to the corner of the 
settle on the left. 

“ Well, Mark lad, are you warrm ? ” he asked 
as he stooped to unlace his heavy boots, and 


12 


5 IVEE THEAR T G WEN. 


at about every third hole he playfully gazed 
up at Mark, winked first the right eye, then 
the left, then both together — and they were 
jet black twinkling eyes— then he contorted 
his plump red face with the most grotesque 
twitchings, and varied the effects by shooting 
the red tip of his tongue in and out, to the 
right and to the left from between his tight- 
ened lips. 

Bet and Nain, in duty bound, affected to 
laugh, but very anxiously looked at Mark in 
the hope of seeing that he understood that 
that was Uncle Darve’s “fun.” But Mark sat 
throughout the performance like a sphinx. 

As Darve cast his shoes under the settle 
he made another effort to amuse Mark by 
shaking his head with its shining black curls, 
as if it were a dog’s. That was usually Darve’s 
greatest success with children, but with Mark 
it failed. 

“ Perhaps he wants something to eat ? ” sug- 


BRYN-NANT. 


13 


gested Bet ; and Nain, having overlooked 
that very likely fact, tittered, and at once 
turned to the table along with Darve. 

Mark was carefully seated on a chair near 
his Nain. He was exceedingly candid. The 
first piece of bread he set eyes on he also set 
his hands on and began to eat; whereupon 
Uncle Darve sent a loud laugh up to the raft- 
ers, and at once checked the lad’s candour and 
appetite. 

Never mind, my boy! Naughty Uncle 
Darve for laugh — as if he does not do the 
same thing every day himself. Take as much 
as you eat my pet. Come Auntie Bet, look 
you sharp and boil that milk for good little 

Mark here Well indeed, doant Davith ! 

grin your face at the boy, like lanterns. He 
not know you only make fool of yourself. He 
will think it in truth of you. Never mind, 
Mark; Uncle Darve is only play, and turn 
his face into nonsense for give you fun.” 


SWEETHEART GWEN, 


14 

The warm milk, a good deal of egg — but very 
little bread — acted pleasantly on Mark. He 
looked brighter. Life seemed provided for. 
It was surer ; and when next Uncle Darve ex- 
perimented with a wink and a grimace, Mark 
faintly smiled. 

After he had finished at the table, however, 
Mark became moody again. Darve tried 
some more practical humour ; but without 
success. Darve took Mark’s hand and dangled 
it about and rubbed it on his chin with three 
days dark stubble on it ; but Mark was not to 
be impressed. Darve tried other tricks, but 
the boy sat on his Nain’s knee with a dreamy 
dissatisfied gaze. 

“What’s the deuce to do with the lad!” 
said Darve impatiently. He not laugh, nor 
cry, nor do the other thing ! ” 

“What is it Mark, my boy?” asked Nain, 
bending over him, and touching his chin. 

Mark did not speak. 


BRVN-NANT. 


15 


“ Is Mark cold ? ” she asked feeling his feet, 
which were red hot. “ Is Mark cold my 
man?” 

Mark shook his head a little. 

“Is it something more to eat?” 

He shook his head more decidedly. 

“What then? — tell Nain, there’s a little 
man ! ” 

“Yes, tell Nain,” urged Bet leaning for- 
ward. “ What’s Mark want ? ” 

“ I haven’t seen the ’brses,” whined Mark. 

“ Bless the boy ! ” exclaimed Nain. “ De- 
pend upon it, Mareea has told him he would 
sure to see the horses. Poor little fellow ! 
Take him Davith.” 

Darve, now very comfortable in a pair of 
sheepskin slippers, muttered that the horses 
had been bedded for the night, and at once 
began with rather forced vigour to pull more 
faces, to snap his fingers and thumb about 
Mark’s face, and to whistle a rollicking tune. 


1 6 SWEETHEART GWEN. 

But Mark took no notice. Uncle Darve 
repeated his best effects. But Mark did not 
gaze in his direction ; he had seen all that be- 
fore. 

“Oh Jenkins!” muttered Uncle Darve 
with an impatient smack on his own knee, 
“ this lad is like bed-post 1 ” and turned to 
the fire in disgust. 

Anticipating the appeal which he knew 
would be made on the lad’s behalf, Uncle 
Darve muttered variations of his disgust up 
the spacious open chimney. Nain, speaking 
very softly in Welsh, and near her son’s 
shoulder, said, “ H-ush — Hush. You may be 
sure there’ll be no peace this night till he sees 
them. Get the lantern, Davith.” Then aloud 
for Mark to hear she said in English, “Get 
the lantern, Davith lad, for little Mark to see 
the horses.” 

But Darve did not move. Bet leaned for- 
ward and touched her brother’s slipper. He 


BRYN-NANT. 


^7 

looked black and impatient at her, but she 
formed her face into a strong silent appeal. 
He protested with a murmur about “ bedded 
for the night, doors barred, and things off ” — 
nevertheless, he put his hand under the settle 
seat and reached his boots. He got on his 
coat and cap, and the tall tin lantern was lifted 
from its nail near the door and lighted. 

Mark was well muffled and carried by his 
uncle to the stables. The place was quite 
warm with the heat of the animals. One was 
lying down, and Boxor was making a dreamy 
hollow sound with its beans, as it turned its 
head to look at Mark through its disordered 
mane. 

“Well, Boxor!” said Uncle Darve, but 
Boxor treated the unseasonable familiarity 
with contempt, whisped his tail and took 
more beans. 

Mark however was delighted. His uncle, 
also pleased now, allowed him to stroke the 


1 8 5 WEETHEAR T G WEN. 

buttock and to take hold of the mane. A 
magnetic thrill of joy passed from the warm 
animal up Mark’s arm and into his head and 
he began ‘riding’ on his uncle s arm. His 
uncle laughingly muttered, and put Mark on 
Boxor’s back. Boxor pretended to bite and 
affected to be restless. Darve told it in 
ploughman’s language to “stand still,” and 
stand still it did ; and Mark smiled his appre- 
ciation of a miracle. 

Mark tells me that he remembers all this 
with a dreamy vividness — even the heavy- 
aired warmth of the stable, the sound of the 
beans, the rattle of the rope in the ring, the 
light from the lantern, and the smell of the 
wood-fire when he was carried back to the 
kitchen. 

But more keenly vivid than anything, he 
remembers being taken in his flannel night- 
gown by his Nain to a sweet white-washed 
little bed-room. He was not taken there to 


BRYN-NANT. 


19 

sleep, but to be shewn to Uncle I wan — 
young, worn, shrunken Uncle Iwan with 
large dark eyes and a face almost as white as 
the sheets and the walls. The opening of the 
door and the entry of Nain and Mark 
changed the atmosphere of the little room 
and weak Uncle Iwan could not greet Mark 
because of a fit of coughing. 

When the long deep cough was over and 
Iwan had regained his breath, he stretched 
out his arm and with his pale, blue-veined 
hand he touched the full and ruddy cheeks of 
Mark. It was like the meeting of death and 
life, of an end and a beginning, of despair 
and hope. Iwan looked searchingly at the 
boy. He stared enquiringly as at a vision, 
and with a keen flush that rose with his emo- 
tion he mused aloud, “Ah! Mareea — 
Mareea!” (Mark’s Mother’s name) and burst 
into tears. 

In an instant a Cousin — Sweetheart Gwen 


20 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


— a blue-eyed beautiful creature of eighteen 
with a bright complexion and curly hair of a 
deep red-russet hue — lightly sped from the 
foot to the head of the bed, not pausing even 
to greet Mark. She instantly mounted the 
low head-board and bending oyer it with her 
cheek upon Iwan’s brow and her hands fitting 
Iwan’s neck, she murmured in a petting, com- 
forting, singing undertone of tremulous emo- 
tion innate in Welsh women when deeply 
touched — Beth yw ; beth yw ! (What is it ; 
what is it !) Cousin Iwan, Cousin Iwan ! 
mewn pa beth y gallaf eich cynorthwyo ? 
(In what way can I help you ?)” 

Cousin Iwan did not answer, but his two 
hands became lost in the over-hanging glow 
of Gwen’s fleecy russet-red curls ; and while 
Iwan and Gwen so communed, Mark was 
taken away and put to bed. 


CHAPTER III. 


MARK AND GWEN. 

In the course of a few days, owing to the 
exacting illness of Uncle Iwan, Mark at the 
suggestion of Gwen was transferred from 
Bryn-nant to another farm, three miles avvay 
between Denbigh and St. Asaph; to the 
home of Cousin Gwen in fact. 

Life there was on a larger scale. Instead 
of the house being on the roadside, as at 
Bryn-nant, it stood inland a little, shewing 
its double cream-coloured gables, its diamond- 
paned windows and square chimneys through 
a few neighbouring firs, a silver birch and a 
tall magnificent oval pear tree, the shape, as 
Mark’s mother aptly said, of its own fruit. 

Two generations earlier the cream-tinted 

( 21 ) 


22 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


Stucco was once stripped off the bricks and 
on an old woman seeing the change she ex- 
claimed, “ Why man, man, you have skimmed 
the cream off the house ! ” and after that the 
farm was known as Ty-Cremed, or Creamed 
House. 

A straight drive between hawthorn hedges 
led to the house, and immediately beyond the 
house were the barns, the shippon, and the 
stables ; and, beyond these, the stockyard and 
the orchard. The front door opened frankly 
upon the general kitchen, and this large 
kitchen with its blue-flagged floor and chalk 
scrolls ; its shining oak chairs in stately dis- 
tances apart ; its large dish-covers like oval 
distorting mirrors; its crowded plate rack, 
the white leaf-table under the front window ; 
the dresser with brass handles against the wall 
opposite, between the staircase door and the 
back kitchen door ; the tall clockcase with a 
large smiling cherub face at each corner of 


MARK AND GIVEN. 


23 


the dial always looking as if Time were al- 
ways cheerful ; the thick patchwork hearth- 
rug with the black Newfoundland dog Nel- 
son and the big white cat Tib sleeping there 
— all these things, together with a loftier ceil- 
ing and a vaster floor, gave Mark an impres- 
sion of life on a much larger scale. 

The change was not very acceptable. On 
the evening of his arrival with Gwen he felt 
very lonely. He had an intense fear of mov- 
ing about. He did not like the number of 
doors, the one opening upon the dark 
boarded-up staircase, the one leading to the 
quiet parlour, the one leading to the back 
kitchen and the dairy which sounded so large, 
hollow, aerial and bare : that mysterious un- 
seen dairy where someone stalked about with 
feet the like of which he had never heard be- 
fore, while a shrill metallic voice wandered 
around, echoed in the milkpails and pans, and 
reached the kitchen where Mark sat by his 


5 WEETHEAR T G IVEN. 


24 

cousin Gwen, like the voice of an ever-mov- 
ing, ever-stalking, ever-talking being that har- 
rowed and frightened him. 

Whenever the click-clack pitter-pat sound 
of those pattened feet threatened to come out 
of the dairy into the kitchen, Mark pressed 
closer to Gwen as he sat on a buffet on her 
left opposite the fire, and tightened his ^grip 
of her dress, with unutterable fears of being 
kidnapped. Night was coming on. He was 
horribly afraid of the place. He could not 
bear its silence ; he could not bear its sounds. 

Gwen was lounging, with the back of the 
chair at her side, under one arm, and her hands 
were clasped. Her blue eyes were very in- 
tently fixed, as if she saw visions in the bright 
steel band of the oven door. She had forgot- 
ten Mark. All her soul was away at Bryn- 
nant — even her tears seemed to be there — but 
feeling Mark clutch at her skirts with both 
hands, and the burial of his head in her lap, 


MARK AND GWEN, 25 

she separated her hands as with an impatient 
snap, impulsively bent over him and thrust 
the glowing ardent face of her maidenhood 
near his and embraced him. Her hands lifted 
his face and his brown eyes were looked into 
by her blue ones, her red curls came over and 
touched his cheek, as she rapidly muttered in 
endearing sing-song undertones, while she 
lifted him to her knee, ^‘And did Auntie 
Gwen forget him! Naughty Auntie Gwen! 
Beat Auntie Gwen. Beat her 1 ” she said 
clasping his wrist and jerking his unwilling 
hand against her willing cheek ; but casting 
his arms around her neck he buried his face 
near hers and clung to her in one of the inex- 
pressible agonies of boyhood. 

What is it, my dear little fellow ? What 
is it, what is it?” she asked, trying to see his 
face ; but he pressed closer and closer, and 
clung harder and harder, and sobbed. 

What is to do ? ” she repeated, but he 


26 


S WEh THhAR T G WEN. 


could not answer. “ The poor lad is thinking 
of home,” she mused, and Auntie Gwen did 
all that she imagined a solacing mother would 
do. 

At an ebbing stage of his emotion, Auntie 
Gwen, to change his ideas, enticed Nelson to 
approach, and placed the dog’s head with its 
large worshipping eyes on Mark’s knee. Mark 
looked down at the dog through his tears, and 
one big tear dropped on Nelson’s nose. Nel- 
son indignant, withdrew his head. He rubbed 
his nose with his paw, and Gwen merrily 
laughed. She tried to entice Nelson again, 
but he stood aloof with his ears dropped and 
his tail low, and every now and again he shook 
his head as if to shake his nose off. Finding 
no relief, he lifted his paw to rub it, or 
stretched his leg firmly out to use it as a post 
for a tickling which seemed to increase with 
the rubbing it was fed on. Gwen laughed at 
every new device which Nelson used, and 


MARK AND GIVEN. 


2 / 


when she had laughed Mark out of his grief, 
though not out of his great deep sighs, she 
took him with a candle through one of the 
mysterious doorways into the little parlour. 

The big kitchen was like a bright week-day ; 
the little parlour like a sombre Sabbath and 
bearing the same proportion to the kitchen as 
a Sunday to a week. The flame of the candle 
had a greater struggle for existence in the par- 
lour’s musty damp air than in the warmth of 
the kitchen. Even the pictures of Spring, 
Summer, and Autumn, in the set of The Sea- 
sons, looked chilled ; while Winter looked 
appropriately realistic in that region of cold. 

Gwen placed the candle on a great round 
table at the rim nearest a formidable mahog- 
any chest of drawers. The table was so large 
that the top threatened to sit on all the 
straight-backed chairs if they did not press 
close against the walls, which they did. There 
was a stuffed pheasant in the centre of the ta- 


28 


5 WEETHEAR T G WEN. 


ble, and a stuffed fox on the chest of drawers 
— the fox always looking as if it would like to 
get at the pheasant, and the pheasant as if it 
would like to run from the fox : to fly, with 
its wings so neatly mingled with its body, was 
out of the question. It was some time before 
Mark could be convinced that the life was 
really out of both of them. 

Gwen went on her knees, opened the deep 
bottom drawer, and from between two dresses, 
one blue silk and the other blaek, brought out 
the shining purple feathers of a Spanish coek’s 
tail, sewn together. She held the cock’s tail 
to the side of her head to shew Mark what it 
was for, and tried to see the dim reflection of 
herself in the mahogany front of the drawers. 
The curved feathers and her curls shook with 
a thrill of pleasure which had passed up from 
her body to her head, and had left a blush in 
her face on its way. 

Mark stood looking at her, and she, on her 


MAJ^K AND GIVEN 


29 

knees, leaned towards him, held the feathers 
to Azs head, while her own roguish head poised 
sideways to view the effect. She instantly saw 
something more than the effect, the feathers 
were tossed away, and with the passionate ex- 
clamation, “ Oh, you little Iwan ; you little 
Iwan Wynn!” she swiftly drew him to her 
breast. “ Oh, cariad, cariad 1 (love, love !) 
Dewch yma— yn nes 1 yn nes ! (Come here — 
nearer ! nearer 1) Whose pet are you ? Whose 
love ? Whose little Sweetheart ? ” she muttered 
and bent him against her as she swayed to and 
fro, and kissed him. 

From that moment Nain, Bet, and Darve 
became shadowy to Mark, and Auntie Gwen 
stood foremost as a special being for his con- 
solation in the great lonely world of Ty- 
Cremed. 


CHAPTER IV. 


THE SOUND FROM THE DAIRY. 

While Gvven and Mark were sitting before 
the fire later on that night, dreamy and moody 
in the quietude and the gloomy candlelight, 
Gwen startled Mark by a sudden rehearsal of 
her clear ringing soprano. Ascending the 
scale with “ Felicity Rob ” she finished with a 
very high pure note on .... “ artch ! Felic- 
ity Rob-artch ! ” 

The mysterious pattened feet travelled from 

the dairy through the back kitchen and to the 

threshold of the front. There Felicity stood 

awaiting orders— middle-aged, tall, lean, and 

sinewy on a pair of pattens, in black stockings 

and a short dark-blue Winsey skirt with black 

stripes. Over this, from her bust almost to 
(30) 


THE SOUND FROM THE DAIRY, 31 

the rim of her dark skirt, was a square-bibbed 
coarse apron, the long strings of which encir- 
cled her waist twice and were tied in front so 
tightly that the contracted skirt of the white 
cotton bed gown ” on her body, poked out 
in circling gathers at the back like an undevel- 
oped fantail. 

Everything about tall and sinewy Felicity 
came to points. Her bare arms were long 
lean shafts ending in the ten red points of her 
fingers and thumbs at one extreme, and the 
round bright points of her elbows at the other. 
Her nose was pointed, and looked more 
pointed than it really was because of the cold 
red tip that always commanded attention. Her 
chin was pointed. Her small black eyes were 
like keen points threatening to pierce you, and 
her dark greying hair was curled to a point 
towards the top of her head where it was fixed 
by a dark bone pin. But the greatest point 
of all Felicity’s points, was her tongue. As it 


32 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


rapidly clattered, its tip looked like the long 
thin tongue of a bird, and seemed t6 have the 
power of endless extension if occasion required. 

Felicity had only stood at the kitchen door 
an instant when she caught sight of Mark. 

“Well, well. Missis!” responded Felicity, 
wiping her red hands in her coarse flax apron 
and coming forward. She fixed herself oppo- 
site Mark, supporting herself with her hands 
on her knees as she stooped in a direct line 
towards him. 

“Well, well! and this is Mark, young 
Mark, your little cousin ? Let me see you. 
Bobl anwyl ! (dear people !) missis, but — 
Why, is he not very like something in the 
face of your own cousin I wan Wynn ? You 
know what I mean? In truth, yes. The 
spit image of a likeness. Well ! only that it 
cannot be, he has the same in his head, and 
the same nose. And think you not so, 
missis? Is it not so what I say ? And how 


THE SOUND FROM THE DAIRY. 33 

are you, my son ? ... . Tut, tut ! You not 
take fright of me, of Felicity Robartch, whose 
your own mother know ? And how did you 
leave your mother, my boy ? Dear me !— a 
reg’lar Bryn-nant breed in his look. A 
ellwch chwi siarad gymraeg ? (can you speak 
Welsh?) Sut yr ydych chwi? (How are 
you?) Deuwch yma, cariad. (Come here 
my dear.) No ? Come to Felicity. Come 
and see the dairy, and the cows, and the little 
cats the kittans — my man. Come with me. 
Well, well ! . . . . Did you ever see such a 
lad with such a frights ?” 

“ He will be good friends soon,” said 
Gwen, but Mark refuted that by clinging 
closer than ever to her skirts, and he was very 
miserable until Gwen had given Felicity 
Roberts some instructions about the churn- 
ing in the morning and dismissed her. 

“ Very well,” said Felicity to Mark as she 
departed on her pattens, “ Very well/ You 
3 


5 WEETHEART G WEN. 


34 

won’t come to me? You won’t come to 
Felicity!” — and Mark saw through the cor- 
ner of his eye as it gratefully followed her to 
the back kitchen door, Felicity’s thin arm rise 
and her bony fist close with a threat. It was 
playful to Felicity; but it was tragic to 
Mark. He was more bewildered than when 
he had simply heard her at a distance. The 
pattens, the black stockings and bare arms, 
the tall lank look, her angularities and points, 
her clattering tongue rippling a rapid reso- 
nant language he did not understand, mystified 
him. He clung to Gwen. He would not 
leave her side, not even to go to Peggy his 
little sister, who, by some mysterious transi- 
tion which Mark did not understand, had also 
arrived at Ty-Cremed. Wherever Gwen sat, 
he sat ; wherever she went he went. He anx- 
iously watched her every move, and was oh so 
deeply grateful when she sat with a settled 
look before the fire, instead of moving about 


THE SOUND FROM THE DAIRY. 35 

the kitchen, filling him with the fear that 
every step she took might be a step out of 
doors and away, without him: leaving him 
with that terror of terrors. Felicity. 

Later on the yellow candle in the tall brass 
candle-stick was lighted, and Mark was taken 
by Gwen to bed. He was taken to her bed. 
She had intended that from the first, but 
whether intended or not it would have ulti- 
mately come about for Mark would more 
readily have slept on a crow’s nest in the 
rookery than with Felicity, or alone, or even 
with Peggy, in that strange house. 

Peggy, on the other hand, quietly ascended 
the dark boarded-up staircase with mysterious 
Felicity as if Felicity were an angel leading 
her to new realms for her enquiring eye, while 
Mark marvelled and wondered. He mar- 
velled greatly at seeing Peggy do this every 
night ; but he marvelled most when he be- 
held her alive and well in the morning. 


CHAPTER V. 


A QUESTION OF TOILET. 

For Mark’s own good, Gwen decided to 
nightly put him to bed at eight o’clock — two 
hours before her own time. This was very 
good as a theory ; but notwithstanding the 
allurements of apples, pears, hazel-nuts, lump 
sugar and peppermint drops, it took many 
nights and far more kisses, and still more 
promises, to put it into practice. Even at 
last it was only effected by the compromise 
that Gwen was to see him to sleep. Some- 
times he awoke after she had gone, and then 
it was woe, woe, woe, all over the house until 
she ran up and saw him ' off ^ again, by cast- 
ing herself alongside of him and pretending 

to go to sleep. 

(36) 


A QUESTION OT TOILET, 37 

In time, however, Mark could awake and 
bear the darkness of the room and not cry 
out. He could patiently lie, awaiting the 
lifting of the latch of the bottom door which 
shut out the stairs from the kitchen ; pa- 
tiently await Gwen’s approach stair by stair 
until her hand was on the door of the room, 
and in came the candlelight, the light of her 
blue eyes, and her bright face of delicate 
outline with its wavy loops of fleecy curly 
hair too assertive to be kept in any precise 
form. 

Gwen always gave an enquiring glance at 
Mark as she passed to place the candle on a 
high chest of drawers. Whenever he was 
awake she undressed behind the high foot- 
board of the old bed, sitting on a chair. 
Then, Mark has told me, he could only see 
the motions of her head and the liftings of 
her arms until she came from behind there 
like a chorister in white. Then she would 


38 SWEETHEART GWEN. 

give the candle its nightcap, Mark would hear 
her cross the floor, feel the clothes pulled in 
preparation for a leap ; then the leap, a nes- 
tling embrace, a shuddering hug in gratitude 
for warmth, a kiss, and Gwen’s cheek (some- 
times cold) banking itself on his. 

At other times, when Mark was fast 
asleep, Gwen disrobed at the side of the bed. 
He discovered this fact without seeking it. 
He suddenly awoke one night from a dream 
of heavy plough horses to Sweetheart Gwen 
like a fair half-robed spirit vanishing to the 
foot of the bed. 

Gwen was no sooner by his side that night 
than he very wakefully asked, Did I 
frighten you ? ” 

“When?” 

“Just now. When you ran.” 

“No.” 

“ But you ran so fast — ” 

“ You little chatter ! Gwen can run if she 


A QUESTION OF TOILET. 


39 

likes. What wakened you? But come; 
Gwen’s tired. Good-night.” 

“ But if you’d been tired, you’d have walked. 
I always walk when I’m tired.” 

“ But if you run you get to a seat sooner,” 
said Gwen. 

“Yes,” replied Mark baulked. “Yes, you do 

that But — but the bed was the soonest.” 

“Well, I’m in bed! Good-night, you little 
rogue!” replied Gwen, hugging him, and 
Mark nestled nearer and was soon asleep. 

In the morning before he was fully awake 
Mark stretched his arms towards Gwen ; but 
Gwen was not there and her place was cold. 
He sat up and looked about. The sun was 
fiercely shedding its beams on the chest of 
drawers and especially on the tall brass candle- 
stick woefully obsolete in the morning light. 
He saw his clothes on a chair. They sug- 
gested getting up. In a moment he was on 
the floor, i, and the tape of his nightgown 


5 IVEE THEAR T G WEN. 


40 

was untied ; 2, and one arm was out of the 
sleeve and his head was hidden ; 3, and the 
gown was off, just as Gwen opened the door. 

With a bound he was on the bed again and 
soon in it, with only his head visible. 

“ I thought you were not afraid of Auntie 
Gwen?” she asked half laughing. 

I’m not ; please will you get my singlet, 
and my drawers — and the others.” 

'‘But why did you run?” asked Gwen, 
leaning over him. “ Eh ? Why ? ” 

“ I — I think I was tired.” 

“ Tired after a good night’s rest and sleep- 
ing so long this morning? Are you too tired 
to get up ? ” she asked roguishly. 

“ Oh no ! ” he exclaimed forgetfully casting 
the clothes off ; but he instantly coiled under 
again with only his hair and one peeping eye 
visible. 

‘‘ So you are too tired, after all ?” 

“ N — o, ” he answered. 


A QUESTION OF TOILET. 41 

Then get up. Come. Your egg is boil- 
ing.’’ 

He moved to rise. On second thought he 
remained where he was and in a tone of una- 
voidable revelation, he confessed—" I’ve got 
no clothes on ! ’' 

“ Haven t you?” asked Gwen with mock 
surprise. 

Didn’t you see me ?” 

^^When?” 

''Just now.” 

" Yes — and you were frightened. You 
were frightened of your kind good Auntie 
Gwen ! ” 

' No. Never. Never, ” said he shaking his 
head. 

" Then what did you jump for ?” 

“It was nearest'' 

" You little rascal, come out of that ! Let 
me dress you.” 

He responded to the call in a sidling sort of 


42 5 WEETHEAR T G WEN. 

way as Gwen reached his clothes. When she 
came to the skirt and was buttoning it, Mark 
said, “ Mother never rubs hard when she 
washes me— and she always lets me wipe.” 

“Very well,” replied Gwen liking him for 
the cunning of his candour. “He’s a deep 
one is this,” she muttered. Mark heard this, 
but could not understand it. He added it to 
one or two other sayings he could not under- 
stand ; and wondered how hard Gwen would 
rub. 

The moment he heard the sound of the 
water he closed his eyes, held his face like a 
grim martyr and clutched his fists with a de- 
termination not to shrink unless absolutely 
necessary. But this was always a crisis. 
Though he knew precisely how gently Gwen 
did wash, he always wondered how each par- 
ticular wash would begin and end. Morning 
after morning he fervently hoped she could do 
the whole of his face with one wetting, for it 


A QUESTION OF TOILET 43 

was awful to have it done by damp instalments. 
Indeed he was a most thoughtful lad for his 
own tenderness and so managed the evading 
swivel-like movem.ents of his nose when Gwen 
was using the flannel, that the washing was 
done with the least amount of friction possi- 
ble. 

“ Why,” he said that morning when he was 
sure the crisis was over, “ thafs not half as 
hard as Mother, when she’s in a hurry. But 
let me wipe.” 

Gwen handed him the towel, he used it very 
tenderly and just before giving it back he said, 

Mother always wets the comb, and takes 
hold like this ; and if there’s a stop, she let’s 
me pull.” He had said this on previous morn- 
ings ; but it always seemed worth repeating. 

“ Very well, my boy. But how does she 
curl it on the top ? ” 

“ Oh that ? ” he asked, feeling his long top- 
lock. “ Like this— round and round with her 


44 


5 WEETHEART G WEN. 


two fingers and then draws one out at each 
end, then touches the curl with her hand to 
see if it will stand — if it will, it’s done ! ” 

I see,” replied Gwen. She carried out all 
his instructions, and gave him a kiss of com- 
pletion and took him down stairs to his break- 
fast. 

After breakfast Gwen left him and he sat 
rather moodily near the fire with his eye anx- 
iously set in the direction of the dairy. Felic- 
ity’s pattens pattered to and fro, her voice 
echoed and re-echoed through the back kitchen 
to the front, and caused him a provoking, 
haunting, uncontrollable dread. 


CHAPTER VI. 


MISHAPS. 

Two weeks passed. As at Bryn-nant so at 
Ty Cremed, the horse was the most wonderful 
and admirable animal to Mark. He had a 
prejudice against cows. He did not like their 
big dull eyes, their restless tails, and especially 
their horns. Even every teat was a horn to 
him. Nor had Felicity helped him to a better 
opinion of the creatures. The very first time 
he ventured to watch her milking, she levelled 
a teat at him and spurted a long blue line of 
milk straight into his eye. That confirmed 
his distrust. Cows were capable of anything 
after that ; and the profound fact that Felicity 
could make the milk come as if out of her 
own palms, as Mark first thought, caused him 


46 .S' WEETHEAR T G WEN. 

to dread her as something unearthly and un- 
natural. 

He forthwith returned to his original faith 
in the horse, and the farm hands were soon 
made aware of it. Mark met them coming 
from the fields. The men allowed him to ride 
cross-legged in front of them while they rode 
sideways to the clinking and jingling of the 
chains ; and they put him on the horses’ backs 
in the stalls while the animals had their mid- 
day meal. 

Indeed Mark became such a famous rider, 
in the stable and out, that one day he was per- 
mitted to ride quiet Denbigh barebacked and 
with only the mane for reins, down the farm 
yard to the shadowy green and weedy little 
pond near the front garden of the house, for a 
drink. True, Denbigh was very slow and de- 
liberate ; but fancy riding a barebacked horse 
all alone, with only the man looking on from 
the stable door ! Why, it was a new epoch ! 


MISHAPS. 


47 


Denbigh walked very quietly to the edge 
of the pond, first put one leg forward and 
then the other, until the forefeet were cov- 
ered. At the sight of the water beneath him 
Mark clutched firmer with both hands at the 
mane, Denbigh innocently bent its head for a 
drink, and in a moment Mark was jerked over 
its neck into the pond. The horse, startled, 
backed out, and as Mark held to the mane he 
was dragged to dry land, soaking and coated 
with green. Denbigh went off to the stable 
with a neigh, the ducks quacked, the men 
bounded down the yard, the collie barked, 
Gwen rushed out of the house with her face 
like a berry and her hair apparently redder 
and more fleecy than usual ; and with Mark 
between her hip and her arm she carried him 
indoors for a change of clothes. 

Felicity was very inconsiderate on that oc- 
casion. She laughed all over the dairy, 
through the back-kitchen, into the front, up- 


48 SWEETHEART GWEN, 

stairs, in the front room where Gwen sent 
her for his Sunday clothes, and down the 
stairs again. The house was full of her fiend- 
ish merriment. 

“ Well this is a Christen for him ! This is 
a Christen ; through and through, with Den- 
bigh for minister and missis for god-mother. 
Oh Mark, Mark, you are made of mischief, 
made of mischief ! Why, missis, he is wet to 
the bones, and shiver like a weaned calf he is, 
and green as a grass. Put him to dry in the 
oven, missis ! ” 

No,” cried Mark. 

“Go away. Felicity Robartch,” said Gwen 
only half serious. 

“ I never did watch such a sight of a 
drench. Had you better wring the boy and 
hang him on the clothes-horse.^” 

“ He has had horse enough,” said Gwen. 

“ Well, ’live one whatever. He will have 
’nough of stable by this. Will you not give 


MISHAPS, 


49 

him wash all over, missis ? Look at his hair 
with the greens in it, and hang like ribbons, 
and his ears all mud, and his nose red ; — 
though to be sure that is colour of its own 
cold. ’Tis hope he will not have fevers on 
our hands, for ’tis so far to Lerpool.” 

“ Hold your foolish talk !” said Gwen im- 
patiently, “and bring me some warm water 
and the flannel and soap ; and warm those 
clothes.” 

“ Well you hear of such like at times, mis- 
sis, and he has blue in his skins already, see.” 

“ Hold — your — talk ! ” cried Gwen, “ bring 
the warm water.” 

“ He won’t forget his cold bathing for time 
to come — if he live through it, for his teeths 
rattles now as if he was take to his bed for 

shivers and trembles Here’s the water 

for you. I wouldn’t be one bit surprise, mis- 
sis, for, see you, his little stomack is shake 
and his toes is turn up, and — ” 

4 


50 


5 WEE THEAR T G WEN. 


“ For goodness sake, Felicity Robartch, go 
back to that dairy and shut the doors after 
you, and if you want to talk, talk to the pans 
and the churn, with your fevers and chills ; 
the boy will be all right as soon as he gets 
into warm clothes.” 

Felicity closed the kitchen door behind 
her, and Gwen soon had Mark in his Sunday 
things — Mark rather glad that something had 

happened to compel him to wear them. 

****** 

On the whole Mark was rather unfortunate 
in his country life. Next day he went to the 
nive in the garden in front of the house, and, 
in his ignorance of the latent powers of bees, 
tried to lash them off their balance with a 
whip. It was a diversion that didn’t last long. 
A bee, which Mark protested he never hit, 
alighted on his bare shoulder, sent him off 
his balance and made him dance as if mad. 
He yelled very large double O’s all the way 


MISHAPS. 


51 


from the garden to the kitchen and com- 
plained that a bee had run a needle and 
thread into his shoulder, and hadn’t taken it 
out again. Gwen professed to make the 
shoulder well with the charm of a kiss, then 
rubbed it with washing blue, and tried to 
find the marsh-mallow paste. 

Felicity was sorrowful over this, but she 
had such an awkward way of shewing it. At 
the sound of Mark’s great cry, she stalked 
from the dairy into the kitchen and began to 
ripple off the most excitable Welsh and Eng- 
lish to Gwen, to Mark, to the floor, and to the 
rafters. 

“ Marsh mallows, missis,” she continued, 

“ is perfect cure for poison-sting, or wart, or . 
rheumatics, or tooth, or strains, or sore, or 
scratches, or pains, or anything — ” 

“ The boy has only a sting at present,” said 
Gwen quietly, looking in the drawers and 
cupboard for the pot of green paste. 


52 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


“And its grow by the garden’s hedge in tiower 
this minute. I will pluck a poultice of it and 
welcome, missis, if you like, for stings is so 
bad for quick swelling and betimes the swell- 
ings does not sink, and they are there for 
ever unless the people is poison to death as is 
known before now in bee bites. But marsh- 
mallow will save if anything will save, boiled ; 
to have it hot as he can bear it, and hotter 
when he used to it. I have been sting many 
times on my legs and others when I was his 
years, and was live near marshmallow, and my 
mother boil ’em on me. Yes, indeed ; shall I 
pluck a hand, missis?” 

Gwen told her she was looking for a pot of 
first class paste that would do better than the 
poultice, and ran upstairs to her room. 

“Poor Mark!” said Felicity taking his 
stung arm in her seggy palm and leaving 
marks like vaccination prints wherever she 
touched. To Mark’s horror she drew him to 


MISHAPS. 


53 

her and kissed him in a wild manner more 
with her teeth than her lips — kissed him yet 
again though he was on the verge of a fit in 
her embrace, and crying aloud to be free. 

Gwen hastened down with a pot of paste 
and quickly sent Felicity about her business. 
But Felicity made it part of her business to 
look back when she reached the kitchen door. 
There she halted, tall, grim, and ill-tempered, 
awaiting Mark’s customary anxious gaze after 
her. She hooked the little finger of each 
hand on each side of her mouth, placed her 
two forefingers at her lower eyelids, and the 
instant Mark’s eyes turned in her direction 
she jerked her hands downwards, shot for- 
ward her tongue and vanished. 

Mark shuddered towards Gwen who was 
about to lift him on her knee. Gwen looked 
around, but saw nothing. 

“What is it, Mark?” she asked, but he 
could not answer. To describe the vanishing 


54 


5 IV£E THEAR T G WEN, 


horror was beyond him ; but it was grue- 
somely vivid on his mind. Wherever he 
looked he saw it. If he didn’t look, he saw 
it. It was within him, haunting him. When, 
when would he be free from that terrible Fe- 
licity Robartch ? 


CHAPTER VII. 


GWEN AT HER EASE. 

There was something drowsy about the 
afternoons at Ty Cremed. After the emptied 
dinner things were removed, and the blue 
slate hearth was brushed, and the fire irons 
were dusted, the whole kitchen seemed to take 
a nap. The fire was piled up with plenty of 
reserve fuel to slowly burn itself away in 
dreams of flame and smoke ; all the doors 
were closed ; Peggy was with Felicity, as she 
almost invariably was ; Nelson lounged in a 
corner with his head on his paws, while white 
Tib lay flat like a marble bas-relief in the cen- 
tre of the dark hearthrug ; and Gwen with an 
intuitive seeking after physical comfort would 
wheel the big sofa nearer the fire. 

( 55 ) 


56 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


With something of the instinct of Nelson 
and Tib, she seated herself on the sofa just far 
enough from the arm to lean against it in an 
attitude which could only be called sitting 
simply because it was not quite lying. This 
attitude received its perfecting touch by Gwen 
swinging her limbs from the floor to the sofa 
and drawing them near her with a self-hud- 
dling motion of settling down for a delicious 
hour of lethargic ease. Gwen, most attentive 
to Mark at all other hours of the day, conse- 
crated this one to herself, and Mark was left 
to his own resources. Not that Gwen slept: 
she simply reclined there with her arm on the 
arm of the sofa, her cheek on her palm, and 
her fingers among her hair. Silent and moody 
she lounged, now looking into the fire, now 
at Nelson and Tib, and now through the win- 
dow at the trees and sky. 

Travelling afternoon beams would slant 
from the window to the sofa silently, turn her 


G WEN A T HER EASE. 


57 


hair into a shimmering crown, kindle her 
bright eyes and roseate face into a special 
brilliance for a moment or two, and then leave 
her and the place in a still more dreamy 
shade. 

Mark got into the way of carrying his buf- 
fet just beneath her, where he sat with his 
head near her lap and she played with his 
cheek or his hair ; or he climbed the sofa, and 
nestled in the most comfortable nook of 
Gwen’s huddled form. Then her hand sought 
his cheek, his neck, or his chin, and without 
a word they both mused through an hour of 
the drowsy afternoon. 

Sometimes frolicsome thoughts overtook 
Gwen’s lethargic mood and she abruptly tit- 
tered, gently shaking Mark as he reclined 
against her. It was in that mood that she dis- 
covered Mark’s most ticklesome parts, and 
plagued him with attempts and threats of her 
probing fingers from his chin down to the 


58 ‘S’ WEETHEAR T G WEN. 

soles of his feet. Sometimes Mark retaliated 
by thrusting his hands under Gwen’s chin, 
and Gwen pretended to be as hysterical as he 
was, writhing with well-affected excruciation. 
She defended herself by catching Mark in his 
most vulnerable part — between the thigh and 
the rib — working her finger and thumb until 
he withdrew his hands and coiled up utterly 
helpless beneath the roguish twinkles of her 
blue eyes and the glow of her animated face. 
Then she stroked his hair from off his brow to 
press her warm cheek there ; and while doing 
so one day, she asked : 

“ Who’s little sweetheart are you ?” 

Mark shook his head. 

‘‘You don’t know? Don’t know? Why, 

you are mine. You are Auntie Gwen’s 

My little sweetheart; my little Iwan,” she 
said in an ardent whisper. 

“ I’m — Mark,” he pleaded. 

Gwen tittered. 


G WEN A T HER EASE, 


59 


How can I be your sweetheart ? What is 
a sweetheart ? ” 

“ Well, you love Auntie Gwen, don’t you ? ” 

“ Yes, I love Auntie Gwen. Oh yes !” 

“ Do you love her very, very much ?” 

As very very as I can.” 

But how very ?” 

“That very!” he cried putting his arms 
around her neck and giving her a hug. 

Gwen swerved her feet off the sofa, fitted 
his arms more securely around her neck, and 
clasping her own about his body she sprang 
from the sofa into the middle of the kitchen 
floor. 

There she swayed him to and fro in the 
hammock of her arms to the accompaniment 
of Nelson’s bounds and barks; there she 
whirled him round and round, and suddenly 
turned him helplessly laughing on his neck 
on the hearthrug. There, kneeling over 
him, Gwen as wild and breathless as Mark 


6o 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


himself, tickled all the laughter out of 
him, tickled him until he lay in a paralysis of 
delight while Nelson looked on with his 
tongue dangling and a bright smiling approval 
in his great dark eyes. Then a pause came. 
Gwen remained on her knees, resting, with 
her hands clasped before her, watching Mark 
and Nelson, her face glowing, her eyes spark- 
ling, and her frame quivering. 

Then a dreamy reaction came. Gwen still 
rested on her knees but with one arm along 
Nelson’s back and her hand on his head, for 
the dog had moved near her for his share of 
caress. The three remained motionless and 
silent. Auntie Gwen and Mark did not ex- 
change a look or a word. Both gazed into the 
fire. The clock ticked muffled in its long hol- 
low case, but nothing heeded it ; a great fly 
buzzed and bobbed at the window in the declin- 
ingsunlight, but nothing heeded that ; the trees 
gently moved to and fro against the yellowing 


G WEN A T HER EASE. 6l 

sky, but nothing heeded them ; the kettle 
sang with a low modulation of liquid tones 
and occasional breathings of steam ; but noth- 
ing heeded the song: all was dreamy abstrac- 
tion until a sound caught Mark’s ear. He 
rose to his knees, and with the enthusiasm of 
a discoverer he pulled Gwens arm and ex- 
claimed '‘Auntie Gwen !” 

“What, my boy?” 

“ When our kettle boils, mother always 
makes the tea 1” 


CHAPTER VIII. 


A CRISIS. 

One Tuesday morning Gwen was very anx- 
iously preparing to go off at post haste on the 
mare Madam. The large kitchen was full of 
commotion. Gwen, Felicity, Peggy, Mark, 
and Nelson were all very much concerned. 
Mark wanted to go with Gwen ; but Gwen 
was too busy and distressed to heed him. 
She was in her long loose dark blue riding 
skirt, whip in hand, impatiently lashing her 
robe as she hastened from the parlour to the 
kitchen with her felt hat and its cock’s feath- 
ers heedlessly awry on the side of her head. 

Felicity, who had been very busy finding 

some of the articles of attire in which her 

young mistress stood, v’as once more sent up- 
( 02 ) 


A CRISIS. 


63 

stairs for a scarf that wasn’t there, and into 
the parlour for gloves that were not there, and 
upstairs yet again for both scarf and gloves 
which Felicity declared at the top of her voice 
from the top of the stairs, ‘^wasn’t neether 
there as well.” 

In the bustle of the hasty preparations, 
the suggestion of Auntie Gwen tried 
to interest Mark in Nelson ; but both Nelson 
and Mark were individually so concerned in 
the movements of Gwen that they regarded 
Peggy as a very great nuisance. Nelson did 
not hesitate to shew it. He leapt from Peg- 
gy’s wooing addresses so violently that at last 
he abruptly knocked Mark in a bumping 
posture on the hard floor, resulting in pa- 
thetic cries and contortions direct at Auntie 
Gwen. 

What with the bounds and barks of Nelson, 
the ill-tempered top-voice top-stair confirma- 
tions from Felicity that the gloves and the 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


6 + 

scarf were not there ; what with the chatter of 
Peggy and the cries of Mark and her oWn 
failure to find the things where she was “ sure 
they were,” Auntie Gwen became enraged, she 
seized Nelson by the slack fullness of his hide 
behind his neck and dragged him whining to 
the door of the back kitchen. There she gave 
him a humiliating help forward with the side 
of her right foot, just as Felicity came red and 
scowling from the staircase and exclaimed : 

‘‘The very deuce is in all things this morn- 
ing ! Or the things ’emselves is in the deuce 
himself, m.ssis, for I can’t find them nowhere. 
Nowhere ! ” 

“ Have you looked well in the parlour?” 

“Better than well!” answered the old fa- 
miliar servant, provoked. 

“In all the drawers ? ” 

“In all everything; and out of it too 1 In 
high and low I have,” retorted Felicity now 
roused too much to keep back her sentiments. 


A CRISIS. 65 

“ But to speak truth, yes indeed truth, missis, 
your things never knows where you are when 
you take them off. It’s the same always; al- 
ways ; it’s everlastings losings with you, and 
always was — a pity there was not string ’tween 
you and the clothes ! And me in the middle 
of my churn ! ” — and off went muttering Felic- 
ity to the dairy. 

Gwen knew the truthfulness of Felicity’s 
reproach and as soon as Felicity disappeared 
Gwen whispered to Peggy, Peggy, my girl, 
you go upstairs and see if you can find my 
scarf and my gloves and my little shawl any- 
where, there’s a clever one ! ” 

Peggy went ; and Mark, now lying on his 
back and kicking his legs to attract attention, 
said, “ I’ll tell you where they are ; if you’ll let 
me come. Auntie.” 

Where, my pet ?’* 

“They’re under the bed. I put them.” 

“ Oh you vixen ! ” said Auntie Gwen drop- 
5 


66 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


ping on her knees and drawing him to her. 
“ Good Mark for telling Auntie Gwen ! ” 

Felicity called from the dairy, “ My word, 
missis ! but I’d like that little demond to feel 
the flat of my hand — and not to go and kiss 
him into mischiefs and tricks like that ! A 
ydyw yn bosibl ? (Is it possible ?) Allan o’r 
ffordd ! ” (Out of the way !) cried Felicity pas- 
sionately, and rushed through the kitchen up- 
stairs for the things. 

“Brysiwch (Quick) Felicity !” called Gwen 
after her. 

“Speak to lightnings, missis!” muttered 
Felicity and continued her course. 

Let me come. Auntie ! ” Mark appealed. 

“Not this time, Mark ; next. I won’t be 
long. Poor Uncle I wan is very ill, my boy. 
Love Auntie, Mark ; and be a good, good boy. 
Auntie won’t be long 1 Play with Nelson — 
and go and see the calves — and the ducks — 
and Auntie will bring you some of Nain’s cake 


A CRISIS. C>7 

back, and we’ll go a long ride with Madam 
another day.” 

Felicity soon brought the missing things 
down, and Gwen soon went off at a gallop. 

During the early part of the morning Mark 
was unusually good, playing merrily with 
Peggy. At dinner however there were frown- 
ing symptoms of uneasiness, and he twice 
muttered, “ I want Auntie Gwen ! ” 

When the afternoon came and she was still 
away and Felicity took Gwen’s place in the 
big kitchen, he began to fear she never would 
return. A depression overcame him. He was 
restive, and fretful. He ran from the kitchen 
to the rarlour; and half way up the dark 
stairs ; and down again. He found his way to 
the barn where even the cackling flight of a 
hen could not startle him, or the sight of an 
egg in a corner appease him. Burying his 
face in one of the heaps of straw be broke into 
sobs. He wanted Auntie Gwen, Auntie 


68 -S ' WEETHEA RT G WEN. 

Gwen ; Auntie Gwen, he wanted. He de- 
clared that he wouldn’t stay without her ; he’d 
go down the cartwa)', along the road, and find 
the steamer, and go to the same seat in the 
cabin and sail home. 

Felicity, missing him, searched and discov- 
ered him in the barn. 

“ Beth ! y chwi yma ? (What ! Y ou here ?) ” 
she muttered, and tried to coax him. 

But he huddled deeper into the straw as if 
to huddle through it. At the sound of her 
approach he kicked the planet, and cried aloud 
to heaven for Auntie Gwen. Felicity seeing 
the hen’s egg in the corner gladly picked it up 
to use it as a bribe. 

“ See, Mark, here’s is a pretty Cochin Chi- 
ney’s egg. Will Mark have it light boiled for 
his tea ? Come and carry it and boil it with 
Felicity. Here my good little boy — Felicity’s 
pet he is — Felicity’s own little pet — feel, my 
good good Markie, feel the Cochin Chiny 


A CRISIS. 69 

warm,’* and Felicity coaxingly touched his 
hand with the egg. 

The touch startled Mark. He swept his 
hand behind him with such abhorrent force 
that “ the Cochin Chiney ” broke with a 
splash, spluttering all over Felicity like a 
shower of molten silver and gold. 

Well ! The villain’s of a tempers in him ! 
Did one ever see the likes of such a tricks as 
this in a lad ! To hit me all over like this 
with the egg I was glad to boil for the little 
demond ! Good chance it was new — but no 
thanks to him for that,"' she said taking up a 
whisp of straw and wiping herself. “ After I 
clean myself all oyer in my ‘second-best.’ 
Well, look you ! ” she muttered surveying the 
gold and silver splashes. “ It is beyond reckon 
where it is splash. Gwaeth-waeth ! Gwaeth- 
waeth ! (Worse and worse ! Worse and 
worse !) More like a dozen eggs than but 
one, and the shells like sticking plaisters all 


70 5 IVE£ THE A RT G WEN. 

over wherever I pick. Ugh ! — Hen epa ! 
Hen dyhiryn ! (Old monkey ! Old knave !) 
/ bury head you! Kick will you? Ha! 
Naughty Mark. Naughty naughty Mark as 
ever boy breathe. Shame of you ! You will 
not have the egg hoil now — nor any other to 
my knowing this day, if you dies for it ! It 
has spoil my gown I do believe — and not long 
since my best ! If my best had been it I 
wculd have murdered his life off him, and 
made him take off every speck with his lick of 
the tongue. I would ! Ugh ! You villain 
to go and split the egg ’fore I know where I 
was, with myself or my clothes. Hullo, Peg- 
gy, you come ? Peggy is my pet ; Peggy 
shall have egg for she is good girl and not a 
bad boy. See, Peggy, what egg he broke with 
his tempers— pity the hen did not know he 

was come with his bad humours, and wait 

’stead of waste herself like this. And a Cochin 
Chmey, Peggy !— eggs as is more value than 


A CRISIS. 


71 


two of any other an’ she lay so seldom, poor 
bird, to have all the trouble for smash. Penny 
each at Denbigh market they are ; and he 
must pay for it. There now ! ’Tis clean a 
little bit now ! but no thanks to him but what 
I was all e:gg ; and shells too.” 

Felicity beckoned Peggy aside and whis- 
pered with very expressive gesticulations, 

“ Peggy dear, go you to him and coax your 
little brother for me. Tell him you have 
Denbigh sweets — and honey — and all things 
in the house. There’s a little ’oman.” 

Felicity stepped lightly out of the barn and 
stood where she could peep through a hole in 
the door. 

Peggy approached Mark by climbing some 
of the straw. 

Mark,” she said when about a yard from 

him. 

He answered by looking round with one 
eager eye, and his hair as rough as the straw. 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


72 

Then he ventured to look with both eyes in 
search of Felicity, and not seeing her he was 
inclined to rise. 

“ Come and sit with me in the kitchen, 
Mark, and we will play horses with Nelson.” 

He leaned meditating with his face in the 
straw again. 

“Have you got a whip?” he asked muf- 
fled. 

“ No ; but we’ll soon get one.” 

He meditated again. 

“And reins?” he asked rising and trying 
to sigh away the past. 

“ And we’ll soon get those.” 

‘‘And who’ll drive?” he enquired looking 
for somebody he hoped he would not see. 

“ She’s gone now. But Mark, you needn’t 
be frightened of Felicity. She’s very good ; 
very good to me. She lets me go with her 
to milk, and I skim the cream with a saucer, 
and drink it, and I churn, and I weigh the 


A CRISIS. 


73 


butter, and I stamp it with the acorn and 
leaf, and I wash the wooden bowls and 
spoons in hot water, and she puts me to stand 
on the dairy slab to peep through the little 
swinging window to see the apples in the or- 
chard, and she sends me on messages to the 
back kitchen — and always has paradises in her 
pocket.” 

“ Has she } ” 

“ Yes ! ” 

“ Does she give them to you ? ” 

“Yes! Lots.” 

“When?” 

“ Always 1 ” 

“ Have you any now ? ” 

“ N-o But let me feel ! ” said 

Peggy pushing her hand down her frock 
pocket. 

She pulled out a handkerchief, then some 
early acorns (Mark began to be interested), 
then a pencil, and half of a crab apple. 


74 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


He stepped towards her with his eyes on 
the apple and Peggy instantly gave it to 
him. He was too eagerly watching the emp- 
tying of the pocket to try the apple then. He 
held it in reserve, anxiously waiting for the 
return of her hand. It brought only a shoe- 
button, and Mark viewed that bit of feminine 
care with masculine contempt. 

The hand dived again and brought from 
the very corner of the pocket half of a para- 
dise. It looked dull, encrusted and dusty ; 
but to both Peggy and Mark the discovery 
was like that of ore rich with possibilities.. 

Peggy popped the find into the clarifying 
crucible of her mouth. Mark was disap- 
pointed. He frowned with demanding vexa- 
tion as he saw Peggy briskly turning it over 
from cheek to cheek. 

“ Here,” said Peggy quietly. ‘‘ I was only 
cleaning it.” 

Mark popped it on his tongue and made 


A CRISIS. 


75 


the most of it. He very soon bit it in 
two however and offered the biggest to 
Peggy. 

No,” she said shaking her dark hair, her 
dark eyes all of a smile, “ not that one.” 

“ Will you have the biggest — after awhile ? 
When I’ve made it littler?” 

I don’t want the biggest at all — ” 

Lo ! there and then his breathing suddenly 
paused, his eyes widened with surprise. 
^‘Why, it’s gone!” he cried. “What a 
shame It wasn’t half done!” 

“ Swallowed } ” asked Peggy, looking at his 
throat. 

“ Yes,” said he feeling his chest. 

“ Which ? ” 

“ The big one — and I was keeping that for 
you.” 

“ No ; I was going to have the small one, 
Mark.” 

“ Oh no ! I was going to make you have 


76 


5 IV£E THEAR T G WEN, 


the big one ; I was really ; but I can’t now ; 
and the little one’s mine — by rights.” 

“ Oh you can have it if you want it.” 

“ Well you know Mother says it’s greedy 
to give the littlest to anybody else. Will you 
have a bit of it? There! There’s the big- 
gest piece of the little one. Any more in 
your pocket ? Feel, Peggy ! ” 

Peggy took the biggest piece of the little 
one, and felt the corners of her pocket again. 
But without success. She felt again but with 
a similar result. Mark seemed to think her 
sense of touch was defective, for he called, 
“ Let me try ! ” and dived his hand m her 
pocket and pulled it inside out. 

“No,” he contemptuously muttered. 

“ Nothin’ ! only dust All mine’s done. 

I wish I hadn’t let that big one go ! Does 
she always have paradise?” 

“ Yes ; let us go to the kitchen. P’raps 


A CRISIS. 


77 


Felicity will give me some ; but you musn’t 
cry, or she won’t.” 

“ I must if she makes me ; and she always 
does. 1 want Auntie Gwen ! And I’ll go. 
I’ll find her. She’s gone to Nain’s; and I’ll 
go, too.” 


CHAPTER IX. 


THE CRISIS CONTINUED. 

Mark ventured to the kitchen with Peggy. 
Felicity was knitting, in an old-fashioned 
wicker arm-chair like an inverted cradle. 
Mark no sooner saw her than he went rub- 
bing himself along the furthest wall with 
frowning reminiscent glances towards the 
chair. Felicity dropped her knitting on her 
knee and summoning a special smile to her 
severe face, she beckoned him with her long 
forefinger. He declined the invitation. 

Peggy went boldly up to Felicity to shew 

Mark that the woman was perfectly tame and 

harmless, and Felicity with the same purpose 

lifted Peggy on her knee. Mark then cast 

part of one eye like a crescent in their direc- 
(78) 


THE CRISIS CONTINUED. 


79 

tion ; and Felicity by way of decoy put her 
hand in her pocket and made as loud a rustle 
as she could with a paper packet. Mark’s 
crescent slowly through developing phases 
turned on them like a full moon. He saw 
Felicity with very marked ceremony put 
something into Peggy’s mouth, and then some- 
thing into her own, followed by a loud 
smacking of the lips. 

Peggy with her mouth away from Felicity 
slyly transferred her something ” to her 
hand and quietly kept it there. Mark had 
not noted that, and when he heard the paper 
rustle back into Felicity’s pocket his tongue 
seemed to sink into his heart, and he bent his 
head on the nearest chair in the deepest and 
direst covetous dejection. He did so wish he 
had the courage to go up to Felicity and 
hover around her pocket ; but not even for 
the whole packet could he risk the clutch of 
her hand, and the gaze of her ferret-like eyes. 


8o 


S WEETHEAR T G WEN. 


It was very foolish of him, and he now con- 
fesses it, but in regard to gaunt Felicity he 
had a childish imagination founded upon fear, 
and he could not help it. To him she was 
supernaturally grim. 

Peggy in a short time worked her way off 
Felicity’s knee, worked round to Mark and 
slyly transferred her big sticky acid drop into 
Mark’s hand. Mark put it in his safest recep- 
tacle, his mouth ; and while the sweet morsel 
lasted he was happy. 

After its dissolution his restiveness re- 
turned. Felicity put aside her knitting and 
tried to be sociable ; but Mark could not 
make himself at home with her, not even with 
the side of her gown where her pocket was. 
After several vain attempts Felicity lost pa- 
tience and jeered at his timidity, pretended to 
set Nelson at him, and made unearthly gut- 
tural noises in the drawers and cupboards and 
up the staircase and chimney. 


THE CRISIS CONTINUED. 


8l 


Peggy to counteract this, again and again 
tried to assure him by practical illustrations 
that Felicity \yas nevertheless perfectly tame 
and good-natured. But Mark would not, 
could not, believe it. He viewed her, when 
she was not looking, like one would view a 
lightning flash ; and hid his eyes in dread. 
Even the thickly-sugared brown bread 
‘ butty ’ which the dairy woman put on a chair 
at a good distance from him, even the apple 
she offered, even the brown honey she shewed 
in syrupy drip from a spoon, even the offer of 
acid drops, even the ^ horse ’ she brought him 
from the top room would not instil him with 
artificial confidence. He would have none of 
them from her, and when at last he would not 
even look at some twisted curl-like candy 
which she breathlessly ran up to her own 
room for, she lost patience, her passion rose, 
it ran in her like black fire, she growled be- 
tween her teeth, “ Hen mule ! (old mule). 

6 


82 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


Nid oes dim yn ei foddhau ! (Nothing 
pleases him.) 'Tis ’nough provoke to a 
saint ! ” and seizing him by his skirts at the 
back she transfixed him between her knees, 
bent over him and brought down her seggy 
palm on Mark’s plump tenderness with rhyth- 
mic smacks. 

The screaming and the scrambling and the 
kicking, then ! Nelson bounded and barked ; 
the cat scampered from chair to chair ; and little 
striking for kin and liberty, brought 
her flat hand with a circular sweep on Felic- 
ity’s cheek as she belaboured Mark. At that 
same instant Mark also took poor Felicity by 
surprise, for in the height- of his agony he bit 
her through her spare skirts on the leg. He 
might have been a viper the way she dropped 
him ; and she reefed her skirts to see if she 
bled. There was no blood, but there was the 
oval mark of teeth which she passionately 
commanded Mark to inspect. As he declined 


THE CRISIS CONTINUED. 83 

to obey, but remained kicking and squalling 
on the floor she swung him by the skirts into 
position and with a much quicker and smarter 
rhythm attacked him again. Peggy screamed 
and tugged, and tugged and screamed for his 
release ; and when released they both sobbed 
in each other’s arms their inexpressible long- 
ings for home. 

At the sight of them Felicity collapsed in 
a chair near the window table, supported her 
head with her hands, and cried as bitterly as 
they did. 

It was an improvised part-song for two 
weeping trebles, a wailing contralto, and a 
barking bass, for Nelson came in with excel- 
lent time at the end of each bar. The com- 
position was not very harmonious, but it was 
very effective, the trebles being chiefly re- 
markable for their tremulous pathos, the con- 
tralto for her dramatic fervour and hysterical 
sincerity, and the bass for the quality of his 


5 WEETHEAR T G WEN. 


84 

two solitary lower-register notes, and the cor- 
rectness of his time. 

The contralto’s part towards the close of 
the work was interspersed with the following 
recitatives — “ Arglwydd ! (Lord !) I go mad ! 
’Tis too bad of ’em. Too bad it is. Oh you 
naughty devils of a lad and girl to fill me with 
this, till I sweat myself weak, and do not know 
whether I am in sense or not. Bad, bad, boy ! 
I’ll tell your Auntie as you call her. I’ll tell 
her a bit of myself too, as leave me with two 
fiends like this. Oh cry / cry ! you wicked, 
wicked wretches!” — the “cry! cry!” being 
delivered to the ceiling with a murderous lift- 
ing of the right arm and the “ wretches” being 
delivered to the table with a rebounding thump 
of the fist. 

The part of the bass was varied at this 
point, for Nelson went barking from the con- 
tralto to the trebles and from the trebles to 
the contralto like a prophet proclaiming peace. 


THE CRISIS CONTINUED. 85 

But it was crying peace when there was no 
peace, for on Nelson’s third visit, the hysteri- 
cal contralto caught him under the jaw with 
her foot and thus dotted one of his bass notes 
for him, and sent him howling high tenor 
notes under the table. 

The trebles responded to this with a duet of 
reinvigorated sobs, and the contralto in a 
deeply emotional passage declared with her 
two hands clenched and extended before her 
on the table, and her head nodding, ‘‘ I kill you 
two’s and myself, if you turn me to a temper 
of murder like this!” which at once pitched 
the sobs at least two octaves higher. 

It was too high indeed to last long. The 
female treble soon dropped an octave and 
then dropped into silence altogether, leaving 
the male voice to a solo in monotone, for the 
contralto and bass were also lulled into calm. 

It must be admitted that the closing solo 
for the male voice, from the very first note to 


86 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


the very last, was absolutely unworthy of the 
earlier numbers. It was insufferably long, 
maddeningly monotonous and wearisome; lack- 
ing variety of tone ; wanting light and shade, 
and utterly devoid of sympathetic treatment. 
The execution was exasperatingly execrable 
in its dull and dreary indifference to the laws 
of melody and art. The voice moaned and 
droned into the most irritating monotony to 
the sofa seat. On, on it went ; moan, moan, 
moan, without even the impetus of grief or 
the sincerity of tears. 

“ Duwcs anwyl ! ” (dear God!) exclaimed 
Felicity. He zs drive me mad ; mad and 
she walked up and down the kitchen, mad 
as all Denbigh ’sylum into one. He send me 
clean out of my head if he groan, groan like 
that ; and his face as dry as tinder, I know ! 
I must have a breath of wind to keep my rea- 
sons,” she said opening the door leading to 
the dairy, and passing through. 


THE CRISIS CONTINUED. 


87 

Peggy followed her, and Mark with his face 
still to the sofa seat, moaned on. 

The mystery was that he himself did not 
weary of it. Even when he half lifted his 
head to survey the hearthrug with his blood- 
shot and swollen eyes, it still went on. It 
went on even as he slackened one leg and le-t 
himself down in a heap on the rug before the 
fire. He now and then sobbed and sighed a 
little, but returned to his moan as if that were 
his only comfort. 

After a long, long time the moan became 
muffled. It sounded afar off down the depths 
of the hearthrug. It gradually sounded fur- 
ther and further and at last it was silenced and 
he was still. 

When Felicity and Peggy returned to the 
kitchen, they found Mark and Nelson fast 
asleep on the hearthrug. 

Felicity cautioned Peggy, went about on 
tiptoe and covered Mark with her black and 


5 WEE THEAR T G WEN, 

white check shawl. Then she bent over him on 
her knees, lifted his hair from his wet forehead 
with her finger tips, and gave nestling Nelson 
a triple pat on the brow. 

Mark slept until tea-time. 

A fairy might have been to lay the table. 
He had not seen such a feast for tea since his 
arrival. There were three of the best cups 
and saucers, a big currant cake, blackberry 
jam, eggs, and— but quite secondary— the large 
oval home-baked loaf and fresh butter. 

Mark was very hungry. That, and the 
sight of the blackberry jam reconciled him a 
little to the situation. Not wholly, however. 
He would not allow Felicity to lift him to his 
chair, though it had a cushion from the par- 
lour on it, and he was not comfortable until 
she sat at one end of the table and he sat at 
the other, with Peggy as an envoy between 
the two courts whose relationships were very 
much strained. 


THE CRISIS CONTIWED. 


89 

The egg wholly and solely to himself, did 
brighten his eyes (still red with crying) as he 
took up his spoon and looked at Peggy. By 
that look Felicity gratefully noted that Mark 
was willing to resume diplomatic relationship. 
Extremely diplomatic— the rogue ! He was 
willing to eat her egg, her cake, and her jam, 
and to drink two cups of her tea ; but after 
the feast he would not permit her to approach 
his throne even in humble suppliance for a 
courtly kiss of peace. No, no. But he was 
quiet, if moody and doleful, and Felicity thank- 
fully left him alone. 

As she sat knitting in the wicker chair she 
fancied that the same lavish table at supper- 
time would win him over for the night. She 
fancied so until a little before supper-time — 
when he asked for Auntie Gwen in a very ex- 
acting tone. Felicity at once began to lay 
the cloth and to place the unfinished cake and 
the blackberry jam on the table. It was a 


5 WEETHEAR T G WEN. 


90 

successful move. Mark rose from the buffet 
to the table, scrambled up a chair, and with 
Felicity at a safe distance he ate very heartily 
indeed of the cake and the jam. The prospect 
became more cheery and he played with Nel- 
son a little. But in the course of performing 
a feat which had become the admiration of 
Gwen — that of putting his bare arm between 
the jaws of patient Nelson — Nelson gave a 
whine of pain, and, on examination, Mark 
found a lump under the dog’s jaw : the foot- 
print of Felicity’s kick. 

That was full of painful reminiscence ; he 
thought of Felicity — and her temper — and 
her foot ; and with compassion for good 
Nelson and a most pathetic consideration 
for himself he lost courage. The fading 
light in the window brought him nearer the 
bed problem, a problem he had put off 
throughout the afternoon in the hope that 
Auntie Gwen would return. Auntie Gwen 


THE CRISIS CONTINUED. 


91 


had not returned ; dusk was setting in ; and 
he did not like Felicity’s resolute walk to the 
back kitchen to bring her own long steel can- 
dlestick. Indeed he sent up a protesting 
whimper, rubbed himself against the dresser, 
and muttered protests in advance about wait- 
ing for his Auntie. 

“There’ll be no. Auntie for you to wait,” 
Felicity replied lifting the candle. “ You 
must go to sleep with Peggy this night.” 

“ No ! I don’t want Peggy.” 

“ Well, you must want her, whether or not. 
Now, Peggy, come.” 

Mark ran across the kitchen and crouched 
under the table by the window. Felicity put 
down the candle, went after him and pulled him 
out by the skirts. 

“ Come ! ” she cried, hot with temper, “ I’ll 
begin as I’ll end with you, my villain. Your 
Auntie is not come back to-night, so there for 
you, and if you are bad boy and not let Peggy 


92 


5 WEETHEAR T G WEN. 


sleep with you, I’ll murder — every bone — of — 
your — body ! that I will and certain ! . . . . 
Oh, you bad, bad boy making poor Felicity 
Robartch say what the Lord never meant her 
to mean! You bad, bad boy! But I willy 
mind me, as sure as breath is breathe in me. 
Begin cry, of course ! Come on here, and no 
more devilments or you will see who is most 
of that, you or me ! ” she said tucking him un- 
der her arm like a sack and seizing the candle. 

Mark kicked and struggled, and screamed ; 
but Felicity entered the dark staircase and 
Peggy followed stamping on every stair in her 
distress. 

Felicity marched him into Gwen’s room and 
put him on the floor. Mark protested. Peggy 
protested. Mark would not sleep anywhere 
or with anybody. Peggy wanted to sleep as 
usual with Felicity. Felicity disregarded both 
and the children united their now hysterical 
demands. 


THE CRISIS CONTINUED, 


93 

** Auntie Gwen ! Auntie Gwen ! ” cried 
Mark, “Oh, my Auntie Gwen !” 

“ Auntie Gwen ! ” cried Peggy. 

“ Well, you can’t have your Aunties ! You 
blarts ! Both of you must sleep one with 
’nother and no more cry about it. Should I 
stay with you till sleep come ? ” 

“ No — no — no ! Auntie Gwen ! ” replied 
Mark running about the room searching for an 
opening. 

“ Well ! Did eyes ever see the picture of 
such a determinations as that!” exclaimed 
Felicity, placing herself behind the door and 
watching him. “ Oh you town-bred torments ; 
no more all-days with you ! What, what on 
earth — and in the heavens — do you want — 
rascal ? ” 

Auntie Gwen, Auntie Gwen 1 ” 

I’ll Auntie you, and Auntie too — leaving 
me like this with a half-English half-Welsh 
mongrel that has the deuce’s own tempers in 


94 


5 WEETHEAR T G WEN, 


him and out of him, too ! Ugh ! come here 
with you !” she said snatching him up. 

Candle in hand she carried him off to her 
own room, Peggy following like a bleating 
twin lamb after a shepherd in charge of its 
mate. Felicity put down the candle and began 
to vigorously undress Mark. Mark dread- 
ed a repetition of history, and called upon 
Peggy to save him ; Peggy tried, but Felicity 
with a swing of her arm put Peggy down and 
pinned her to the floor by standing on her 
skirts; and on went the undressing of Mark 
until he stood stark naked. 

At the sight of the rosy marks of her own 
fingers upon him. Felicity softened a little, she 
petted him and tried to coax him into his 
nightdress. For the sake of covering, Mark 
submitted ; but once covered, he renewed the 
revolt. Felicity allowed him to run wild 
about the room while she took Peggy in hand. 
Peggy was easy to manage. Then she bun- 


THE CRISIS CONTINUED. 


95 

died the two children into bed. It was like 
putting a storm to bed. The clothes rose in 
breakers ; and then in a vast tidal wave flowed 
to the bottom of the bed, and Mark and Peggy 
went running about the room. Suddenly the 
window rattled as if hit with small shot. It 
was the sound of gravel. 

Horror made Mark and Peggy stand still. 
Felicity put out the candle and whispered 
“ Hush ! ” The rattling sound came to the 
window again, and they heard a lonely deep- 
voiced call. 

The children crept to the bed and Felicity 
went to the window, which opened like a door. 
It was instantly splashed with gravel, and 
Felicity laughed. She slightly opened the 
window and spoke Welsh. The deep voice 
outside growled. As a fact it growled at 
Mark and Peggy — they were in the way. 
Felicity said something decisively, closed the 
window and latched it. Then the children 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


heard something placed against the wall 
outside and soon the low-toned voice came 
nearer. It was at the window in fact. 

There was an urgent tapping ; Felicity 
called out a decisive protest and ^'good-night.” 
Still the deep voice and the knocking went on, 
and at last she opened the window again. 
There was a shuffle, Felicity gave a laughing 
scream, and Mark and Peggy heard a kiss. It 
intoxicated Felicity. She banged the window, 
reeled laughing to the bed, threw herself upon 
it without undressing, and in time fell asleep 
as she was. 

After a long time huddling together Mark 
and Peggy also fell asleep. Mark has told me 
that in that strange half sleeping sleep he had 
a most vivid dream— a dream that left a kind of 
foretelling on all his consciousness next morn- 
ing. He dreamt that he went up the stack 
yard, passed into the orchard at the back, 
walked up a path leading to the stile in the 


THE CRISIS CONTINUED. 97 

hedge, mounted the stile — and, quite suddenly, 
found Auntie Gwen, coming home through a 
wood ; and Auntie Gwen was so glad that she 
put him to stand on a fallen tree, stooped with 
her back in front of him, drew him on her 
back, and gave him a ride all the way home. 


7 


CHAPTER X. 


AN ADVENTURE. 

Mark acted as his own interpreter of that 
dream. Immediately after his late breakfast 
he with faith in his own convincing conscious- 
ness went up the farm yard, passed into the 
orchard, and with much more difficulty than 
in the dream he climbed the stile and walked 
to the scanty skirts of a wood. It was in the 
wood proper where he had met Auntie Gwen 
in the dream and where he had once really 
been with her, so he ran along the wavy track 
leading to the closer trees. He ran until the 
track tapered into the grassy undergrowth of 
the shadowy wood, looking to the right and 
the left in search of the great big dream-tree 

where he had seen Auntie Gwen. But none 
(98) 


AN ADVENTURE. 


99 

of the trees he came across were large and leafy 
and drooping enough ; so on he went, over 
grass patches and through clusters of bracken. 

At one place something started up from be- 
hind one of the clusters. It looked at Mark with 
its keen, sly, brown eyes, lifted its sharp nose 
and pricked its sharp ears, and then made off 
sweeping the ferns with its heavy brush. Mark 
thought the fox from the parlour had followed 
him and he staggered helpless ; then he ran 
in another direction ; ran until he tripped over 
a bramble branch and came to grief on all 
fours. Before he rose a squirrel leapt in front 
of him from the ground to the trunk of an oak. 
It leapt like madness on springs from branch 
to branch and he believed the fox had made 
itself smaller to tease him. He was afraid. 
He would go back : but strayed into thicker 
underwood, and darker overwood ; he went by 
tufts and mounds over spongy masses of moss ; 
by rotted trunks embossed with lichen and 


100 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


feathered with fern ; over springing brown 
spaces fragrant with pine-needles and cones ; 
under aerial birches to the rustle of leaves then 
beginning to fall ; down grassy hollows and 
up inclines thick with brambles and honey- 
suckle, and under the deeper dusk of closer 
trees. 

On, on he went, panting, musing, muttering 
and murmuring, until the clap-like flap of 
wings and the flutter and flight of a pair of 
pigeons from their nest in a flat-topped fir, 
made him stand aghast. He looked for an 
exit. To the right and left was impenetrable 
wood ; to the front and back was wood ; above 
him was wood waving and rustling — all hem- 
ming him in with a whining howl, for a strong 
wind had risen. He did not exactly cry ; but, 
as Mark under cross-examination said, he mt 
ready for it, especially when the place became 
suddenly dark. The darkness came through 
the trees, down into the wood, and with it the 


AN AD VENTURE. 


lOI 


drip and rustle of big rain and the rumble of 
thunder over the trees and among them. The 
rain pattered as if the drops were racing, and 
he crouched into a hollow between the rabbit 
burrowed earth and the long arms of some 
brambles. The place became like midnight, 
for he was in a wood within a wood ; but, 
dark as it was, a flash of lightning found him 
out and made the bramble bush dazzle and 
the whole wood like white flame. 

The wind howled far and near, the trees 
waved and creaked, the thunder exploded in 
mid-air and shook the ground. A rabbit 
scampered under the bramble bush for its bur- 
row ; but seeing Mark it stopped short, sat on 
its haunches for an instant, and inspected him. 
Scarcely had the creature bobbed the white of 
its tail to run when — flash ! descended the 
lightning in front of him ; and Mark next 
saw the rabbit scorched out of its ordinary 
shape and dead. The thunder rattled in the 


102 


5 WEETHEAR T G WEN. 


wind and the wind howled. The whole wood 
moved, top and bottom. Trunks crashed, 
branches ground each other, creaked and 
snapped ; pines fell like long solid thunder- 
bolts and lifted the earth with their roots ; 
bushes lashed each other, while the sodding 
drip of a deluging rain lashed everything that 
was above the ground. The whole world 
seemed to be sobbing, and Mark, as part of it, 
sobbed too. He curled himself into a ball 
with his mouth packed with pinafore and felt 
himself breathing hot air into his palms. He 
says that up to then, as far as he knows, he 
had never heard* of the world coming to an 
end, but while he was sobbing with the break- 
ing-up world about him that idea came to 
him — and he wished himself at home, at his 
real home, at his father’s and mother’s home 
in Liverpool : as if, forsooth, that were a local 
habitation that could never come to an end. 

A shimmer of sunbeams moved along the 


AN ADVENTURE. 


103 

trailing branches of the bramble in front of 
him, and spread to others. Great spots 
dropped from the trees and every waft of wind 
sent down a shower, but the sun pierced 
through and made the wood like a raindrop 
fairyland. 

Mark ventured out of the hole and found 
himself surrounded by trees that had fallen 
crosswise and in heaps. He was beset on 
every side by interlacing trunks, branches, and 
leaves, as if the top of the wood had been 
lowered to the ground. He could neither 
creep under nor over, and sat on a trunk. He 
became hungry, and thought of his dinner; 
and then as if he had had dinner he thought 
of his tea. In that hour even Felicity was 
idealized. He was sure he could love her — if 
she only brought him something to eat. 

He made efforts to liberate himself, but he 
was blocked in on all sides and the sun sank, 
shedding a wild quivering golden light even 


104 


S WEE THEAR T G WEN. 


into his prison of trunks, branches, and leaves. 
He called aloud, Auntie Gwen ! Auntie 
Gwen ! ” — but the sky darkened into an indigo 
blue until the half moon rose big and coppery, 
climbing the sky as if to look at him ; and the 
stars, following its example, stared at him. 
The wood became as still and silent as if the 
storm had killed it, and as if the night was its 
tomb. 

In that dead calm he himself seemed to die : 
he swooned to sleep and dreamt the most 
strange things about terrible Felicity. She 
was part cow, part cat, part woman — the fore- 
part cow and the hind-part cat. Each of the 
four legs had her skirts on and the neck was 
dressed with her bodice. The cow-cat-woman 
went howling and bellowing about the kitchen, 
up the stairs, through the dairy, into the farm- 
yard. All the other cows and cats about the 
place came out to see it, and they bellowed 
and howled, and the cow-cat-woman bellowed 


AN ADVENTURE. 


IG5 


and howled in return, wondering what was to 
do with them and what was to do with itself. 
The horns dropped off, the head dropped off, 
the two eyes came out of the head and hopped 
about like birds, the legs dropped off and 
danced about with the skirts, and the tail 
stood on end beating and waving time. 

Mark says he then awoke, but instead of see- 
ing such pranks he simply saw the bramble 
bush before him and daylight. He heard 
some distant crows caw, and a bird on his own 
bramble bush chirp. He moved to creep out 
and in going through the entrance a spider’s 
large round web completely netted his face, and 
the spider itself, as if Mark were a bigger in- 
sect than it had ever trapped before, ran about 
his face bewildered. 

Sweeping this off, he stood in the open 
again and heard the buzz and hum of insects. 
He heard something more: Auntie Gwen 
called, “ Mark ? Mark ! ” from the air. He 


I o6 thear t g wen. 

looked around and up. He saw her on the 
branch of a tree, and he danced wild with re- 
lief. 

Gwen was not long dismounting and forc- 
ing a way through the barrier of branches and 
leaves ; and wet, torn, distressed and wearied, 
she took him like a bundle of wet shreds and 
patches into her arms, kissed and hugged him 
in her own passionate way, called out to Felic- 
ity and others that the lad was safe, and took 
him home to the best breakfast he had ever 
had. 


CHAPTER XL 


WELSH COURTING. 

When a,n Indian youth wishes to woo an 
Indian maiden for his bride, he leaves his 
father’s wigwam at night, steals into the wig- 
wam where his loved one sleeps, and reclines 
at her feet awaiting her favourable recogni- 
tion. 

In Mark’s time some Welsh courting was 
done on much the same principle ; and hence 
this chapter of accidents. 

Felicity had a ''follower” — Tam Williams, 
employed at Ty-Cremed. Auntie Gwen, quite 
against her own wishes, also had one — Elias 
Lewis, the son on the next farm : a tall, well- 
built, beardless young farmer of twenty-five, 
but with thin lips, small bead-like eyes, a nose 

( 107 ) 


io8 


5 WEETHEAR T G WEN. 


almost as keen in its edge as a paper knife, and 
straight black hair. He was determined, and 
for a farmer, dressy, with a partiality for knee 
breeches. 

Felicity encouraged Tam far more than 
Gwen liked, for in the mornings Tam was very 
late harnessing his horses and Felicity was 
sometimes too drowsy to buckle her shoes. 
Gwen, on the other hand, emphatically dis- 
couraged Elias Lewis, and once in Mark’s 
hearing told him to keep on his own side of 
the hedge. 

One night when Gwen and Mark were gen- 
tly dozing to sleep, Gwen alertly turned the 
clothes from her ear and listened. Soil was 
splashed against the window panes. Was it 
someone from Bryn-nant news about I wan ? 
She swerved out of bed and went to the win- 
dow. 

News about Iwan? It was that Elias 
Lewis ! The sandy splash came to the win- 


WELSH COURTING. I09 

dovv again. Gwen was roused to indignation. 
Was the son of a well-to-do farmer, a master, 
mean enough to use the vulgar tactics of some 
of the farm servants with — her ? She mut- 
tered her passionate disgust. 

There was another splash of sand. In a 
moment the blind was lifted, the door-like 
window was opened, and the water-jug was 
emptied as near as possible on Elias’s head ; 
on second thoughts, for the sake of noise, the 
jug itself was smashed to atoms on the boulder 
pavement in front of the house, and on third 
thoughts, the basin followed. 

^^That will cool him; and warm him too,” 
muttered Gwen trembling. She shut the 
window, drew the blind, and returned to bed ; 
Mark and Gwen heard Elias Lewis tramp 
across the farm yard to go back home. 

Next night, however, he tried again. He 
pelted the window twice ; but Gwen paid no 
attention and he went away. He repeated the 


no 


5 IVEE THEAR T G WEN. 


operation the third night, but with a similar 
result. His insults, however, galled Gwen. 
She resolved to stop them. On the following 
night she stayed up much later than usual and 
found Felicity something to do in the back 
kitchen. She stayed up in fact until a sound 
was heard outside. Assuring herself of Elias 
Lewis by running upstairs and peeping through 
her window, Gwen left a light in the bed-room. 

^‘Felicity Robartch,” she said, at the last 
moment when they were ready to go upstairs, 

ril sleep in the back room to night — you go 
to mine. I haven’t slept there very well for 
the past two nights.” 

“Very well, missis,” said Felicity, “ if you’re 
wishing it. Very well; and will Mark go 
with you or with me?” 

“ With Auntie of course,” was Gwen’s reply. 

Mark and Gwen went to Felicity’s room at 
the back. 

Scarcely had they settled into warmth when 


WELSH COURTING. 


Ill 


a handful of gravel against the panes made 
Mark jump. He threw the clothes off with a 
cry. Then came another splash ; and another. 
This was strange. How did Elias Lewis know 
the change ? Gwen sat up for awhile, listen- 
ing. A beautiful moonlight illumined the 
window blind. 

Mark,” she whispered, “ you’ll promise me 
to be good ? You won’t cry or shout or move 
whatever happens ? — and we’ll go for a drive 
with Madam to-morrow.” 

Mark promised and Gwen went to the win- 
dow and peeped. 

It was not Elias Lewis, but her own 
“ hand,” Tam Williams. Even while she stood 
there in the semi-darkness another fling of 
gravel came like shot. Gwen considered. 
She decided what to do. She put her hand 
under the blind, withdrew the catch, gave a 
few taps of invitation ; and quickly began to 
dress without a light. Mark shortly heard, 


II2 


5 WEETHEART G WEN. 


what he had heard once before — the ladder 
placed against the wall and a knock at the 
window. He also heard again the low-toned 
voice of Tam Williams. Gwen finishing her 
dressing, and returning to the bed, whispered 
— “ Aye, it’s Tam ! Quiet ; there’s a good 
boy ! ” They saw Tam’s big head at the win- 
dow. They saw him open the lattice and 
raise his large body halfway through. Quiet 
as rabbits were they. He pushed the blind 
before him ; came through, and stepped on the 
floor in his stocking feet. 

When he had closed the window, Gwen 
called from her dusky quarters to him in the 
moonlight, 

“Tam Williams !” 

Tam shot bolt upright against the moon-lit 
blind. 

“ Isn’t it ’Licity Robartch ?” he asked. 

“No, it isn’t ’Licity Robartch,” said Gwen 
advancing. “ What do you mean, sir?” 


WELSH COURTING. 


II3 

'' Duwcs Anvvyl, mistress ! Indeed, indeed, 
mam, it is too bad of me ; too bad ! but can 
you tell me if you please — eh — can you tell 
me, mam, what time Felicity Robartch will be 
up early in the morning, first thing ? I want 
— eh — I want to — well, mam, my stockings is 
want mend, my heel is go barefoot, and I 
thought 'Licity Robartch would mend ’em al- 
most on my foot while I wait. Indeed truth 
’m.” 

“ I’ll truth you,” replied Gwen seeking a 
light. 

“ Yes indeed ! believe me or not, ’m, now or 
never. And now that I remind me, I was 
want to see you too, missis, early ’fore morn- 
ing, about those turnips pass the orchard grass 
field, ’m. They’re—” 

No doubt they are asleep by this and not 
walking into each other’s rows,” retorted Gwen, 
vigorously striking a light. “ Never you 

mind the turnips. Go home and don’t make 
8 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


II4 

yourself like a villain and a thief, again. 
See,” said Gwen pointing to a gun hanging 
on the wall over the fireplace, “ is more 
to the point than turnips at this hour.” 

“ Duck-gun ?” muttered Tam amazed. 

“ And goose-gun too, if you come with your 
wild chase here,” broke in Gwen. 

He retreated towards the window. 

Here, this way ! ” said Gwen fancying she 
heard a sound elsewhere, and he stepped for- 
ward eager to obey. Hastily thinking of her 
next move, she happened to look at his stock- 
ings as he stepped within range of the candle 
which Gwen held, and Tam at once appealed 
with as much pathos as possible. 

Indeed ’m you can see with the candle and 
your own eye yourself whether I’m not walk 
in barefoot or not— and I thought ’Licity Ro- 
bartch would darn ’em while I wait ; but darn 
and dang me double, mam, if ever I do the like 
of this again ! ” 


WELSH COURTING. 


I15 

“ Come ; no more ! ” replied Gwen sharply, 
and with a glance at Mark she stepped lightly 
to the door of the room, as if to guard it. 
She was now sure that she had heard some- 
thing elsewhere. 

Tam Williams ! ” she called like a general, 
with the brass candlestick in one hand while 
she lifted the other and stood as straight as a 
sentinel. 

Missis exclaimed Tam, asking to what 
awful doom she was about to condemn him. 

“ Don’t stir ; stay here ! ” was Gwen’s curt 
reply. 

“ Yes ’m,” he said relieved, and fixed himself 
until she should set him free. 

Gwen very quietly opened the door and 
closed it after her. She soon returned with 
a resolute gleam of daring in her eyes. 

“This way, sir!” she whispered, “and no 
noise — do you hear? — wakening everybody 1” 

Gwen, candle in hand, led the man from 


Il6 SWEETHEART GWEN. 

darkness to darkness until she reached the front 
bed-room door. Her hand passionately lifted 
the latch and straight into the dark room she 
walked, followed by Tam, almost before Fe- 
licity, who was dressed, sitting on the side of 
the bed, had time to scream ; and before Elias 
Lewis, who was standing about three yards 
away as if he had been turned to stone while 
passing between the window and the bed, had 
time to move. 

For the first time recognizing Felicity by 
the light of Gwen’s candle, Elias Lewis uttered 
oaths, snapped his finger and thumb, and bent 
his head ; and Tam stood confounded between 
the smartness of Gwen and the apparent vil- 
lainy of Elias Lewis and of his own Felicity, 
who was in great distress with her face in her 
gown. 

“ Confound it, Elias Lewis, it’s too much ! 
— too much!” — and Tam bounced in his 
stockings like a ball, and let ” in a feverish 


WELSH COURTING. 


II7 

fighting attitude immediately opposite Elias, 
who was also enduring the indignity of stand- 
ing in his hose. 

“ Hold — hold !” cried Gwen thrusting the 
candle between them as if to singe Tam’s 
young beard. Tam bounced back ; but with 
the white of his eyes and the clench of his fist, 
he swore vengeance. 

' Really, missis, I may be fool ; but I am 
not villain — no, not villain ! I’m sure shirtin 
of that, and there is gospels I would sware on 
it. Fool p’raps ; but villain, no ! — but look 
you here, ’Licity Robartch ! ” 

Felicity hid her face more and rolled over in 
a half reclining attitude with her distressed 
head on the pillow. 

Elias Lewis was too obstinate to speak. 
He seemed inclined to jump through the win- 
dow. 

Well, gentlemeny when you are ready, 
said Gwen. 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


1 18 

Both were eager to go. 

“ I don’t see why I should honour you with 
stairs — go as you came, please,” and she 
stepped forward, opened the gate-like lattice, 
and indicated that she was ready to say good- 
night to Elias Lewis first. 

Frowning and shewing his teeth he worked 
himself through the window, while Gwen 
stood a little aside, and he descended the lad- 
der. When on the ground he wildly withdrew 
the ladder and let it fall with a crash, and 
made off. Gwen, hearing the crash and see- 
ing the situation at a glance, laughed and 
closed the window. 

“ Come,” she said, ''you shall have the stairs,” 
and shewed him through the room door, while 
Felicity still hid her face on the pillow. 

“ Did she speak, missis ? ” anxiously asked 
Tam going down the staircase. 

“Take care Nelson doesn’t speak to your 
calf,” replied Gwen. 


WELSH COURTING. 


1 19 

“ Bless me, missis ! — call him to make him 
know you, or come you first — please!' 

“ Get on with you ! He must be as deaf as 
water to let two men get in the house without 
a bark.” 

Quite as if resenting that reproach. Nelson 
gave a dreamy bark, on the kitchen side of the 
closed door at the foot of the stairs, and Tam 
muttered — “ Please, please!' 

“Open the door!” said Gwen, “ he won’t 
touch you ; most is the pity.” 

Tam lifted the latch and Gwen commanded 
Nelson to “ Lie down.” 

As Nelson was already lying down, it was a 
command he obeyed without a move. Tam 
opened the stairs door, and in the dark stepped 
on Nelson’s tail. The dog rose with such ur- 
gency that he tripped Tam, who fell like a 
corn sack into the staircase. In the very nick 
of time he bumped his head on the very stair 
to which Gwen was in the act of descending. 


120 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


She actually stepped on poor Tam’s long hair ; 
but she was no sooner on than she was off 
again, for Tam, like Nelson, moved with such 
urgency that he tripped her. She fell over on 
her left side, the candle stabbed the wall and 
went out, and Gwen was full length on the 
stairs in the dark. She was not hurt ; in fact 
she was very much amused. 

“Are you fall, missis?” Tam asked, but 
she did not speak. The collapse indeed gave 
her excited humour a touch of wickedness. 
“Are you fall? Where can I pick you up, 
missis ? Are you hurt — are you dead or ’live ! 
For goodness speak, mam, and doan’t keep 
me at death’s door in the darkness like this ! 
Bless me ! — She is stiff, straight as nail ! ’Lic- 
ity Robartch ! ’Licity Robartch ! Mistress 
has fall. Here is mischief ! Here is mischief ! 
Down, Nelson — down, you demond ; and me 
with no brimstone match in my pocket ! ’Lic- 
ity Robartch ! why stick she up there with her 


WELSH COURTING. 


I2I 


cry when there is plenty for it to do down 
here!^’ 

A titter from Gwen settled Tam’s distress. 

“ Ohy mistress, mistress ! It is too bad of 
you to give one sweats like this ! I thought I 
was hang at the ’sizes for you. Thank the 
stars for my poor neck to die respectable ! ” 

Gwen found a match on the stairs. She 
despatched Tam through the front door as 
seriously as if he had that moment come 
through the bed-room window ; and returned 
to Mark, who was fast asleep. 


CHAPTER XII. 


THE MARKET DAY. 

By some means a version of the incident 
travelled out of the bed-rooms of Ty-Cremed 
down the farm lane, along the main road, past 
the little white chapel, under the plumes of 
the fir trees, and the ivied branches of the 
oaks and birches, and away up the steep high 
street of Denbigh on Market day. 

The version seemed to have been communi- 
cated to the town rather than to a person, for 
while everybody knew of it, nobody knew how. 
If you turned into the tap-room of the Cross 
Keys, or of the King’s Arms, or the Hawk and 
Buckle, it was there. It seemed to be in 
every glass of beer of the young men, in every 

half glass of whiskey of the old men, in every 
( 122 ) 


THE MARKET DA Y. 1 23 

“ drop of gin hot and sweet ” of the old ladies, 
and even in the glass of port wine of the 
farmer’s daughter who “had to have ‘some- 
thing ’ ” for the sake of the comfort of sitting 
in a cosy room either at mid-day or for half an 
hour at the close of the market. 

The story was at the counter of every drug- 
gist shop, at every grocer’s, every draper’s ; in 
carts, and on ponies and donkeys j wherever 
there was a man or woman, there was the 
twinkle over the latest good thing. Even the 
policeman dangling his short ash-plant at the 
ecclesiastical looking market entrance had a 
relaxed smile of enjoyable knowledge. Inside 
the market the story had been told and re-told 
over the cutting and jointing of many a quar- 
ter of Welsh mutton, and over the sale of 
Welsh homespun, small wares, and groceries. 
Further in the market still, in the cool fra- 
grant butter department exclusively occupied 
by shawled women, young ana old, the story 


124 


SWEETHEART GWEN, 


travelled by whispers and winks from head to 
head and group to group. 

Gwen was not long at her slate slab where 
her maid stood awaiting the regular customers 
for her well-known make of butter, before she 
realized that she was the heroine of the day. 
Far more than the usual customers crowded 
about her and the wicker-basket with its snow- 
white cloth and round pounds of butter with 
their acorn print in high relief. In fact from 
morning until noon she held a compulsory re- 
ception to receive the congratulations of those 
women who accepted the facts, to convince 
those who could not believe them ; and espe- 
cially to modify the versions of the many who 
took an intense delight in making a good 
thing better by adding to what they had heard 
something spicier which they imagined. Those 
romancists very much hurt Gwen. The blood 
rushed to her face, a flash gleamed in her eye, 
as she resented the exaggerated versions of 


THE MARKET DA V. 


125 


what after all were very simple, innocent 
facts. 

If one hostel in Denbigh had the story in a 
more intensified degree of hilarity than anoth- 
er, it was the Hawk and Buckle in High 
Street, for all the characters of the tragicom- 
edy usually made that their place of call either 
for the mid day market dinner or before start- 
ing for home. 

There were indications of this intense hilar- 
ity at the Hawk and Buckle during the mid- 
day dinner, at which about twenty hearty 
people of both sexes sat at a long table under 
the chairmanship of the host, and, as it hap- 
pened, the vice-chairmanship of Elias Lewis 
himself. 

Gwen was not there, but she heard that 
Elias Lewis was so taunted and joked up the 
table, down the table, and across the table, 
and particularly by Darve of Bryn-nant, that 
before all the guests were served, Elias Lewis 


126 SWEETHEART GWEN. 

Stuck his fork into the leg of mutton, threw 
the knife into the dish, snatched up his hat, 
and walked out of the room like a war-horse. 
Farmer laughed with farmer, and wife with 
wife; the long room rippled with reiterated 
Welsh, Darve clapped his hands and knees, 
and there was an immediate call for the din- 
ner beer. 

That incident also found its way up the 
High Street, into the market, and from there 
to the bar parlour of every hostel ; and poor 
Elias was the subject of renewed banter. 

Gwen sold out her butter earlier than usual 
that afternoon, and arranged with Felicity to 
get down to the Hawk and Buckle and have 
the trap ready quite an hour before the custom- 
ary time, so as to avoid further demonstrations 
during the general exodus, Gwen, however, 
was delayed at the grocer’s, and at last hasten- 
ing olf, she turned down the High Street. 
She saw Nain opposite a draper’s window. 


THE MARKET DAY, 12 / 

And where are you in such haste ?” asked 
Nain. 

“ Home, Nain bach.” 

Aye, aye, indeed ; and wise, from what I 
hear.” 

“ And you, Nain ? ” 

“ Well, I was in my thoughts, Gwen ; I was 
consider whether flannel red or white would 
be best. The poor lad is cough so. He fair 
make me cough for him ’tis so hard with him. 
Red, I am thinking is more warm, and look 
warmer ; though, indeed, girl, I am grieved in 
my heart to get it, for that is the colour he is 
begin to spit.” 

^‘Nain? Nain!” cried Gwen, her young 
face wrinkling with pain. 

“There I am 1” confessed Nain. “ He ask 
me not to tell, and I have give it you free -as 
a cock with its crow ! But do^ not pretend, 
Gwen, my girl, when you see him ; though in- 
deed nobody hates lie more than Nain does; 


128 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


but may be the Lord be willing to pass this 
one as good as truth seeing as He was con- 
sid’rate to the sick Himself.” 

“Never you mind,” said Gwen. Never 
you mind about telling me, Nain, I should 
soon learn it — poor lad ! Red flannel you 
think ? ” 

“Well, that is my puzzle this minute, girl. 
I would not grieve his eye for the world ; and 
to speak truth I fear to think I see red on him 
myself, though it is like a fool’s suspicions if 
it is best for him. Red after all, I think. 
My poor Iwan!” exclaimed Nain. “I think 
I lose him bit by bit, day by day, now. He 
want to speak less, and that is hard when the 
time for talk is come less and less. And 
what think you, Gwen, my girl, how he speaks 
when he does speak ? — but there, my pet, 
dont, dorit, though I can’t help cry myself 
when I think twenty-five and to go ! But if 
it is the Lord’s will I must be willing too 


THE MARKET DA V. 


129 


willing too — though it is hard and strange 
willingness to want the other way. But it is 
beautiful when I think, and I am wanting to 
tell you — beautiful, indeed, my girl — it is not 
a word of English from him now ; what 
small bit he speak is come from him Welsh, 
so sweet and gentle, as if he want to go to 
heaven from Wales. And I think of his dear 
father who was so proud of the mountains as 
he never would utter one word about them but 
in their own tongue of Clewyd. But I am 
talk, and talk; and talk will not buy flannel 
or get you home,” said Nain stepping to the 
shop door. 

I’ll get it for you,” said Gwen, to save 
Nain pushing through the crowded cus- 
tomers. 

“ Well, indeed girl, I be glad to wait here ; 
people ask such questionings and I am not in 
mind for it with only sickness to tell them. 
A yard and half — thick — woolly — warm 
9 


130 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


none of your thin, like draper’s paper, and 
through in single wash ; — and white, my lass, 
whatever.” 

Gwen had to wait some time. 

Nain put down her basket and parcel on 
the pavement under the window, and stood 
musing with her hands before her. The re- 
appearance of Gwen roused her. She took 
Gwen’s hand and the parcel between both of 
hers, and paused a moment. A solemn look 
passed over the whole of her fine old face and 
fixed on her dusky brow, like a cloud-shadow 
on a wood. 

“ For goodness sake, my girl,” she said in a 
low persuasive tone, and casting her black 
eyes around to see that she was not overheard. 

For goodness sake, my dear girl, don’t have 
no more bother with that Elias Lewis. I 
have been want to tell you ; he has a cranky 
humours ; and always was from a child.” 

“ I /lave nothing to do with him, Nain ; 


THE MARKET DA Y, 


I3I 

and I want nothing,” said Gwen, ‘'but he 
must leave me alone.” 

“ Don’t pretend that you notice ; and he 
will tire ’fore you.” 

“ But when he comes into the house, 
Nain ? ” 

“ Well, that — that is — mean,— it’s bit awk- 
ward that ; but take you no notice so far, my 
girl, for if there is bother between you, our 
Darve says he will come and shake him by the 
neck like a rat-terrier — and, goodness bless us, 
our Darve would kill the man, as sure as life ; 
—and our Iwan so ill. Tis quiet we want. 
So close your eye to his foolishness. But in- 
deed, indeed, I must go. Bet waits for me on 
the Pontrufidd Road. Good-night, my dear 
girl, and come you soon. He is so glad of it ; 
glad, poor lad. Good-night. And get you 
home, my Gwen. Nos dda i chwi ! (Good- 
night to you ! )” 

“ Good-night,” answered Gwen, hardly 


132 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


thinking of what she was saying as Nain 
moved away. 

Gwen stood at the shop window confused. 
She could not at once recall the direction she 
was going when she met Nain. Her thought 
followed the tall straight old woman in her 
loose dark gown and grey woollen shawl, de- 
scending with firm careful step the steep High 
Street of Denbigh. Step by step the grey 
figure went further and further away ; and 
Gwen still stood — watching, dreaming, and 
wondering, and very sad. An idea roused 
her. She at once entered the shop, bought 
three tea cakes and hastened after Nain, 
who was by this near the bottom of the 
street. 

“ Oh, my Gwennie Gwen-Gwen ! ” mur- 
mured Nain with tremulous solicitude. “ My 
Gwennie Gwen-Gwen ? I did not mean to 
bring your tears when I spoke advice — 

“I know; I know, Nain. It isn’t that. 


THE MARKET DA Y. 


133 


Should I come with you ? Is Iwan so 
bad?" 

“ Consid’rate, good-hearted one ! " muttered 
Nain in Welsh. “ Indeed, my dear girl, he is 
bad ; but you must get you home to-night. 
Come you to-morrow, or the next. Market 
day is wanting you at home, I know. And 
what is this, my child ?" 

‘‘Only a taste for you and Iwan, 
Nain." 

“ Oh, bless you, bless you, Gwen ! It is 
only grieve me that he is want such gentle 
meat." 

Nain put forward her face with her lips 
pursed ready to kiss, her hands being occupied 
with her baskets and parcels. Gwen put her 
arms around Nain’s neck and kissed her on 
both cheeks. 

“Then good-night again, my Gwennie ; 
and God bless us, for indeed we both want it 
this minute. And get you to home ; get you 


134 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


to home, my girl ; and good-night to you " — 
and they parted. 

Gwen reclimbed the steep street to keep 
her appointment with Felicity Robartch at the 
Hawk and Buckle. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


IF NOT FRIENDS — FOES THEN. 

At the arched entrance to the Hawk and 
Buckle was an old school companion of 
Gwen’s, lavishly attired in the fulsome style 
of the day — a wide-brimmed cream-coloured 
straw hat, with an ostrich feather; a loose 
brown silk dress, with rippling flounces like 
water-falls, increasing in circumference and 
in “ fall ” from her knees to her feet ; and a 
loosely-fitting velvet jacket made especially 
spruce, by lines upon lines of narrow braiding 
about the wrists and the borders, and bright 
black satin buttons. The young lady was 
fair, tall, and vivacious, and the school compan- 
ions had not seen each other for four years. 

‘‘ Gwen ? 


(135) 


5 WEE THEAR T G WEN. 


136 

“ Winnie ? ” they exclaimed, and a mingling 
of two heads and four arms under the broad- 
brimmed straw hat, took place. 

“ I’ve often thought of you,” said Winnie. 

And I of you,” said Gwen. 

“ Mother and I are on our way to Ruthin. 
She is resting, come and see her.” 

“ I was coming for my gig,” said Gwen. 

“ Here to the Hawk and Buckle?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Let us go in then. Mother will be de- 
lighted. She used to say a look at you had 
more in it than a day’s talk with others. She 
always said that.” 

The friends moved arm in arm into the 
archway. 

“Are you married yet, Gwen ?” asked Win- 
nie, laughing, and coming to a stand. 

“N — o. And you?” 

“ Six days to-morrow and I shall be. Why 
you used to have hosts of sweethearts at 


IF NOT FRIENDS— FOES THEN. 


137 


school — you remember ? — at least you called 
them yours. But what became of your cousin 
— Iwan or Ewan, I think it wa^ ? . Oh, 

Gwen ! I did not mean to hurt you ! he’s not 
married, is he ? ” 

“ N — o. No, dear fellow I will see 

your mother and be off. It is late.” 

“No hurry,” said Winnie. 

“ A great hurry,” answered Gwen, “ I want 
to go home and then round to Bryn- 
nant.” 

They passed under the arch and entered the 
hostel. Opposite the door was the landlord’s 
cozy little windowed office where he presided 
over the big brown jugs of home-brewed beer. 
To the left of the office was the plain bar par- 
lour with its sanded floor ; and it was to the 
parlour that Winnie and Gwen went. 

The little room was full. Farmers and 
several farmers’ wives and daughters were sit- 
ting at tables around three of the walls, and as 


5 IV£E THEAR T G WEN . ' 


138 

the two young women entered, the buzz of 
conversation ceased. It was a surprise, one 
or two even clapped hands, and one genial old 
farmer with his rough dark beaver hat on one 
side, and his hand on his glass called in Welsh 
— “ Bravo ! Give me a young woman of 
spirit ! Here’s to her, my men ; you know 
what I mean.” 

“Bravo!” “Good!” “Here’s to her!” 
were the replies, and most of the glasses were 
lifted. 

Gwen attempted to retreat, but a woman 
dressed in a style which corresponded with 
Winnie’s, instantly greeted her. It was Win- 
nie’s mother. Between the two, Gwen was 
practically pushed into a chair near the door, 
there she was warmly welcomed as an old friend, 
and at once invited to have a glass of port wine. 
Gwen shook her head and glanced around the 
room. She caught sight of Elias Lewis al- 
most opposite, and whispered an ardent wish 


IF NOT FRIENDS— FOES THEN. 139 

to retire ; but Winnie’s mother to the right 
and Winnie to the left, would not heed what 
at last became an appeal. 

Just then the bell-rope hanging in the centre 
of the room was pulled by Elias Lewis, who 
stared at Gwen as he backed to his seat. 
Gwen shuddered under the gaze, her warm 
radiant face looked as if the blood beneath 
were going white and thin, and an unusual 
blankness came to her blue eyes. 

The landlord entered and took orders. 
When he returned and retired again, Gwen 
found that she had two glasses of port wine 
before her. She was puzzled. Winnie’s 
mother admitted ordering one; Elias Lewis 
ostentatiously claimed the honour of having 
ordered the other. 

It was an odd, half-defiant proceeding. 
The men and women looked at each other and 
muttered. 

The only one to speak out was Darve, and 


140 


5 WEE THEAR T G WEN. 


his voice rang loud above the rest as he called 
across the room : 

Elias Lewis ! But you have a great bare- 
face to order drink where it isn’t want.” 

“ I’ll not go all around to Bryn-nant to ask 
permission,” replied the other with a sneer. 

Gwen trembled. She thought of Nain, of 
Iwan, and of peace. 

But if you won’t come to Bryn-nant,” said 
Darve, passionately taking off his hat, and 
banging it on the table, “one of Bryn-nant 
will come to you — yes, be-hang me, now, if you 
are in partic’lar hurry, with your impidence ! ” 
That was too much for Gwen, and ignoring 
all in the room except Elias Lewis she walked 
to where he was sitting. 

Every eye followed her. She held the g.lass 
of wine which he had ordered, in her left 
hand, and with appealing conciliation she 
said, “ Come, let us be friends,” and offered 
her hand. 


IF NOT FRIENDS— FOES THEN. 141 

Elias Lewis was taken by surprise. Gwen 
invitingly extended her hand a little nearer. 

With the sneer of a man too soon submitted 
to, he ‘put both hands into his trousers’ 
pockets. 

Strong words of contempt passed round, 
but as Gwen still stood with her hand ex- 
tended, nobody moved ; not even Darve. 

“ Let us be friends,” repeated Gwen and 
re-offered her hand. 

He thrust his hands deeper into his pockets, 
and a snarl came to his face. 

“ By the deuce ! ” roared Darve, taking up 
a position by Gwen s side, “ Take you her 
hand or I’ll put a double head on you and lift 
the grins off your face.” Elias was stubborn. 
“ Oh ! you cacyneu ! ” (wasp) growled Darve, 
and taking Gwen’s hand that held the glass 
into his, he dashed the wine full on Elias’ 
fresh sneer, saying, “ If not friends ’tis foes 


142 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


“Bravo!” “Well done.” Serve him 
right.” “ Did you ever see the likes to that ? ” 
“ He deserves it.” “ As good as gold, Darve 
Wynn,” the company called, “As good as 
gold ! ” 

Elias Lewis’s wits seemed to be shocked 
out of him. He looked idiotic with his eyes 
staring, his lips apart, the red wine trickling 
down his face and dripping off his chin. A 
roar of laughter and the stampede of the 
Vv^omen restored his wits j but in a very ex- 
cited condition. He muttered an oath and 
sprang to his feet, whereupon Darve and 
another man seized him. Gwen wanted to 
stay to keep Darve’s fists down, but Winnie, 
her mother and the other women would not 
let her. 

They took charge of her and hustled her 
into the kitchen beyond the Tap, and through 
that into the Inn yard where Felicity had the 
gig ready. They all begged Gwen to mount 


IF NOT FRIENDS— FOES THEN 143 

and to drive off ; but she would not. Only 
for the superior force of the women she would 
have returned to the uproar in the parlour, for 
she shuddered at every thought of Darve ; and 
when he came, as he thought, as satisfactory 
evidence that he was perfectly safe, somewhat 
to his disgust she said : 

‘‘ But, Darve, you did not strike Elias ? 
You did not hurt him ?” 

Oh girl ! — You make me wish to the 
blessed heavens I had!” said Darve, and 
turned on his heel. Then relenting he turned 
again, saw Gwen mount her gig and bade her 
and Felicity “ Good-night.” 


CHAPTER XIV. 


CASTING OUT THE DEVIL. 

The Sundays at the farm were a great mys- 
tery to Mark. All the gates were shut, the 
cows were quiet, the horses had nothing to do 
but eat in the stables, and the men lolled about 
as if waiting for Monday. To add to the 
mystery Mark was taken by Auntie Gwen to 
'‘Capel” on the Denbigh road. It was really 
a Chapel-of-ease for the convenience of those 
who could not go to town, and that service 
was usually conducted by Abram Rees, a 
local preacher, who acted as keeper of the 
Chapel and worked on Gwen’s farm* as a 
general handy man. Gwen provided Abram 
Rees with material comforts on six days of 

the week ; and he provided her with spiritual 
(144) 


CASTING OUT THE DEVIL. 145 

comfort on the Sabbath. During the week 
she could order him about with secular deter- 
mination ; but on Sundays, under the influ- 
ence of his long and touching prayers, she 
knelt before him, the most submissive of 
creatures. 

Outwardly the chapel was a little white cot- 
tage, but the inside had been cleared of all 
domestic associations and fitted like a work- 
box, with plain wood compartments of vari- 
ous sizes for pews, with an extra and elevated 
compartment let-into where the chimney had 
once been, for the pulpit. Beneath the pulpit 
was a small square space formed by the front 
pews, fitted with seats. That was where the 
Elder sat, and where the afternoon “class” 
gathered, the white mud floor being worn 
into hollows near the seats and towards the 
centre, by the friction of the feet. 

On the Sunday following the eventful 
Market day Gwen went to Chapel as usual, 

10 


146 SWEETHEART GWEN, 

At first she shrank from the idea in case 
Elias Lewis might be there — but in an in- 
stant it seemed that that was the very reason 
why she should go ; to show that she was not 
afraid. 

Elias Lewis was anything but a regular 
attendant, but he was there that day in a 
spirit of defiance ; and Darve, a more irreg- 
ular attendant still, was also there, looking 
far more ready for a friendly fight than for 
prayer. Darve sat in the front pew on the 
right of the pulpit, and opposite Gwen’s ; 
while Elias Lewis was boxed in the front 
pew opposite the pulpit with only a few yards 
between him and Darve, or Gwen. 

Darve was flushed and in excellent humour ; 
but Elias Lewis looked pale, ill-tempered and 
unforgiving. 

Nothing eventful occurred during the Serv- 
ice, but when Abram Rees selected as the 
subject of his discourse The Casting out of 


CASTING our THE DEVIL. 147 

Devils, Darve quite forgot himself, and looked 
inferentially at Elias Lewis as if a capital joke 
had just been told. A smile beginning at 
Darve’s pew travelled from pew to pew and 
even into the pew where Elias Lewis sat ; but 
it did not travel to him ; he sat like a pallid 
effigy untouched by the magnetism that was 
increasing the colour and brightening the eyes 
in all the faces around. 

Gwen pitied Elias Lewis, and as slyly as 
she could signalled to Darve with a slight 
frown. At that Darve affected to convulse 
with laughter and ducked his head in the 
pew. When he looked up again it was with 
an assumed solemn gaze of attention at the 
preacher. But it was a palpable pretence. 
It was a gaze with such a roguish flashing 
twinkle at its corners that Gwen had to for- 
swear looking that way. 

That Sunday Abram was unusually elo- 
quent in his earnest, florid, and yet homely 


1 48 *s WEETHEAR T G WEN. 

way, and he had not been preaching long be- 
fore the twinkle disappeared out of Darve’s 
gaze, and Elias Lewis sat keenly concerned 
in every word. There was nothing directly 
personal in the discourse ; but indirectly it 
was very personal indeed. He was warm and 
sincere ; he spoke appealingly. Sometimes 
he leaned out of the pulpit and asked a ques- 
tion and paused for a response, and the little 
Chapel filled with sighs and the moan of 
some old man, while the fine old women bent 
their heads and wiped their eyes. 

With a searching glance from pew to pew, 
to the right, to the left, and in front of him, 
he declared that everybody had a devil which 
wanted casting out — some had the devil of 
lust, some the devil of revenge, some the devil 
of impatience, some the devil of spite, and 
some the devil of defiance. All these wanted 
casting out, and they could only be cast out 
by every creature opening the heart to the 


CASTING CjUr THE DEVIL. 149 

Spirit of love and forgiveness. This was at 
close quarters. Darve slyly knuckled his 
eye ; the colour of shame rose to Elias 
Lewis’s high cheek bones ; Gwen’s eyes 
frankly sparkled with reconciliation, and all 
in the little Chapel were touched with a feel- 
ing of peace. 

The hymn following the discourse was 
sung with a piercing sincerity, Gwen’s voice 
rising like a penetrating thrill through the 
quieter tones of the men. After the hymn 
every head was willingly bowed during one 
of the longest prayers Abram Rees ever de- 
livered, but the fervour of his appeal to God, 
to woman, and to man, to cast every devil 
from every soul in that little place before 
they breathed the generous air of autumn 
outside, made it appear short ; and when he 
closed many a head remained bowed on its 
handkerchief a few moments longer than 
usual. 


150 ^ WEETHEAR T G WEN. 

The Chapel soon emptied, and Gwen, 
Darve, and Mark stood on the road a few 
minutes at the point where Darve had to 
make for Bryn-nant. They did not refer to 
Elias Lewis. Gwen asked after I wan, Nain, 
and Bet ; Darve tried to be playful with 
Mark, but could not ; and after a few rapid, 
awkward words about Abram’s sermon, 
Darve went on his way. 

Gwen was soon on her way home, quieter 
than usual, and with Mark at her side. She 
had not gone far before she was overtaken. 
It was Elias Lewis. Approaching her, he 
said frankly : 

“ If not too late, I would like to shake 
hands.” 

Gwen’s response was so ready, so frank, 
that he could hardly believe that he held her 
hand. 

‘‘Thank you— thank you. Miss Gwinell ! 
Not foes then, now?” 


CASTING OUT THE DEVIL. 


151 

Gwen, in the flush of ready forgiveness, 
looked up at him ; then bowed her head, 
saying : 

“No, no, Mr. Lewis.” 

His face coloured, his eyes brightened, a 
gentler expression softened his hard features : 
he wanted to say more, but could not. Grat- 
itude confounded him. It confounded Gwen. 
As the tears threatened her eyes, she seemed 
to herself to weep the very wine that had 
been cast in this man’s face. And yet in 
another instant her hand was withdrawn with 
a subtle intimation in its passionless slacken- 
ing that she could go no further than that. 

With convictions like hot steels in him he 
felt that his was a love without love. He 
was doomed to lose her. He had not the 
supreme quality that would win her. He felt 
it in her hand ; he saw it in her eyes ; yes, 
her very tears were his discharge. 

When he turned away and mounted a stile, 


SWEETHEART GIVEN. 


152 

he had the look of having the curse and not 
the blessing of love. 

Gwen moved homeward with Mark. She 
took Mark’s hand. She thought of sick Iwan. 
She had thought of him even while her hand 
was in Elias Lewis’s. If poor Iwan knew the 
strife she was being put through ! She al- 
most wished that he did : she was so loyal. 
Loyal ? As loyal as love itself ; and she halt- 
ed, stooped and half-kneeling she kissed Iwan 
through his likeness, Mark. 


CHAPTER XV. 


WORD FROM BRYN-NANT, 

A WEEK passed. On the following Sunday 
afternoon Gwen sat opposite the kitchen fire 
with her feet on the fender, her dress skirt 
drawn up over her knees, and leaning forward 
on her elbows. There were some hazel-nuts 
on her lap, but . she did not heed them. She 
simply sat gazing at the fire. 

Mark had slyly emigrated to the pond with 
bread for the ducks. 

At the pond he discovered quite a new 

thing in ducks. He had parted with most 

of his bread, when, to his surprise, one of the 

birds sailed to the edge of the pond, waddled 

a little up the bank, and extended its neck in 

the direction of his palm. Mark opened his 

(153) 


5 WEETHEAR T G WEN. 


154 

hand, the duck freely accepted the invitation 
and began to guzzle the crumbs. A wild idea 
came — he made a grab — and he found the 
duck’s head in his hand. He was so surprised 
by his miraculous dexterity that he forgot how 
to leave go, and instead of slackening, he 
tightened. The duck gave a number of quick 
gurgling quacks as much as to say, but with 
far more graphic phraseology — 

Here ! That’s enough ! Let go. It isn’t 
fair!” 

But Mark didn’t let go ; and the duck ap- 
peared to explode with a tremendous flap of 
both wings. All the other ducks rose to their 
feet in the water, and quacked and flapped 
their surprise. Mark quite as miraculously 
as he had done it, undid it, and away went 
the duck testing its ruffled neck, and trim- 
ming its feathers, to mutual quacks of con- 
gratulation all over the pond — whereupon, as 
dexterously as Mark had surprised the duck, 


) 


WORD FROM BR VN-NANT. 1 5 5 

Mark was surprised by Felicity. She seized 
him by the skirts of his Sunday clothes from 
behind, whirled him under her arm, and car- 
ried him to the back kitchen, the back way. 
His clothes were muddy, and his hands and 
face were mottled with splashes of dirty wa- 
ter, though Felicity had not long before made 
him “as clean as a new pin.” In that back 
kitchen, with all the doors closed,^ he was 
washed as he had never been washed before, 
as he has never been washed since, and, so he 
tells me, as he hopes never to be washed 
again. Felicity scolded him for being so 
naughty, so cruel to Auntie. He was to go 
and keep Auntie company and to be good 
and kind ; and taking him to the front- 
kitchen door, she opened it and pushed 
him in. 

Auntie Gwen was still sitting with her feet 
on the fender, and her dress skirt drawn up ; 
she was still leaning forward on her elbows. 


S WEETHEAR T G WEN, 


156 

and she had a limp damp handkerchief in her 
hand, and another on her lap. 

Mark approached. He placed his arm on 
the back of her chair ; but Gwen, beyond mut- 
tering into her handkerchief, “Well, Mark ?” 
took no notice. He stood there in inactive 
attendance for some time, but wearying of 
doing nothing and of having nothing said to 
him, and not being able to enter into a for- 
eign emotion, half in protest he went to the 
oak dresser and began lifting the brass han- 
dles, two at a time, just to hear them fall into 
their slots. 

“ Don’t, Mark dear,” appealed Gwen, with- 
out looking round “ Don’t, Mark, . . . 

my pet, .... because of Uncle Iwan.” 

“ Uncle Iwan isn’t here.” 

“ But he is very ill Don’t, 

love!” 

“ He can’t hear it.” 

“ But I do. Come here. Come here to 


WORD FROM BRYN-NANT. 157 

Auntie. Come and ‘ love ’ Auntie Gwen," 
she said, sinking her face into her hands. 

Sympathy was somehow debilitated in 
him. He slowly sidled towards her, and 
when Gwen allowed him to approach, to 
rub against her without a move or a word 
on her part, he felt as a prince must feel 
when an enthusiastic reception is not forth- 
coming. 

Over some thought of herself rather than 
of him, Gwen put one arm around his waist. 
tiHe expected the customary hug ; but she 
kept her head bent to her other hand, and 
did not say anything. He was almost vexed, 
and thought of the dresser handles again. She 
shortly lifted him to kneel upon her knees. 
She pressed his hair up from his brow, and 
her eyes appeared scorched when they looked 

into his But after all, she could not 

bear the likeness which she had purposely 
sought. No, no. no ! The look seemed to 


158 SWEETHEAR T G WEN. 

come direct from Bryn-nant; and hugging 
Mark, she veiled her eyes in his neck. 

Mark remembers the smart of her tears 
between their cheeks, he remembers Auntie 
Gwen wiping her face and his ; he remembers 
how her distress was a dull mystery to him, 
which her muttering did not explain, and he 
remembers the dead inactivity of his own feel- 
ings. He was ‘"sorry” for her, he wanted to 
be good, to be kind, he even wanted to cry 
with her ; but he had nothing personal to cry 
for, he had not a tear at command, and he 
almost wept because he couldn’t. 

Gwen became restive. She took Mark with 
her up-stairs. She seated him on the bed and 
paced up and down the room, from the door 
to the window and from the window to the 
door, with her head bent, and the handker- 
chief to her eyes. Once she fell on her knees 
at the bed-side, buried her face in the clothes, 
and sobbed : 


/ 


WORD FROM BR YN-NANT. 1 59 

“Oh, Mark, Mark— poor Uncle I wan ! 
Auntie must cry, and if you are lonely, 
come ! ” 

He thrust his arms about her, he tried to 
find her face, but could not ; he tried to move 
her arm away, but could not ; he spoke, he 
appealed, he cried ; but on Gwen sobbed, 
heedless of his tears, as if, after all, she could 

best weep for I wan alone. 

******* 

Gwen went to sit, with Mark by her side, 
at the window. But she could not rest. She 
went to a chest of drawers, opened the long 
bottom drawer, and kneeling she brought out 
her very much mixed remnants of finery and 
began sorting them according to their kind 
on the bed-room floor. Mark looked on. A 
little framed glass portrait fell out of one of 
the batches of material, and Gwen anxiously 
examined it, afraid that it was broken. It 
was not broken, and she gazed at it as if to 


i6o 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


read the very thought of the sitter at the 
moment the portrait was taken. Then she 
showed it to Mark to test if he knew it. 

“ Uncle. Uncle I wan,” he said. 

Gwen pressed the picture to her bosom ; 
then at the sound of Felicity’s call coming up 
the stairs, Missis, Missis ! Missis dear!” she 
gave a peculiar cry and rose. 

“ Word from Bryn-nant. Poor Iwan is 
— gone. Five minutes wanting to two.” 

Gwen, with her hands pressing hard against 
her face, staggered to the bed and sat there 
silent and immovable. Mark climbed the bed 
and sat by her, but she did not heed. She 
did not move or speak or appear to breathe. 
Felicity touched her, saying: 

Missis Are you faint ? ” 

''My Iwan. My own, own Iwan. Gone! 
Gone 1 ” moaned Gwen. 

Felicity thereupon wept into her apron, and 
going to the window uttered lamentations. 


WORD FROM BRYN^NANT. i6l 

“ So sweet a lad was Iwan Wynn ! No won- 
der everybody love him, .... though, . . . 
though indeed they only follow his good ex- 
amples, ... he had love for all, ... for all, 
he had, ... not one nor two, but everything. 
Oh, dear Iwan, I grieve for the dogs and 
horses and cattles at Bryn-nant, now. And 
the Lord be with his poor old mother this 
minute ! ” 

“Don’t, don’t— don’t. Felicity!” Gwen ap- 
pealed. 

“ Well, he was so sweet a lad. I— I— can’t 
help have feelings for him. I can’t help it ; 
and to see him go gradual before my eyes for 

months and fall like the leafs of Autumn; . . . 

and you sweethearts! .... and love each 
other so.” 

Oh, Felicity, Felicity Robartch ! no 
more !— leave me, please ! do go down.” 

“Indeed, my dear missis, I feel it. ... I 
feel it as much as anyone, I do,” answered 


II 


i 62 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


Felicity with her apron to her eyes, and turn- 
ing from the window to leave. “The dear 
lad’s death not come so near home to me, but 
I love him in my w 

There was a brittle sound of breaking glass 
under Felicity’s foot. Gwen uttered a cry of 
comprehending pain and was soon on her 
knees shedding the tears of a new grief upon 
I wan’s portrait crushed to atoms. 

“Picture?” asked Felicity, “Picture? . 
Iwan Wynn’s picture? No, no ! You don’t 
say ? Missis ! Oh Missis, if you do not give 
me forgiveness, I have you stamp me out, and 
out, in the same plaee. I feel that I kill him 
for you, this minute ! Y mae yn wir ! Y 
mae yn wir ! (It is true ! It is true !) But I 
could not help it. Help it? Help it? I 
would rather it my own head. Oh, my own 
heel is go through me ; through and through 
me it is, to my own heart. But I am sure 
Iwan Wynn is forgive me himself, for he know 


WORD FROM BR VN-NANT. 163 

I no more tread on him ’cept by accidents than 
he would put his foot on me. He knows it, 
he knows it. I am sure this moment he for- 
give me — and better than earthly forgiveness 
too.. Oh missis, missis, you are a bit hard on 
me ! You are indeed. Aren’t I sorrow to the 
very thoughts of my own grave ? I did not 
know you had his picture out. T did not 
know you had the picture of him at all, ever. 
I have broke my own heart with the glass,” 
bewailed Felicity pacing the floor, while 
Gwen still knelt over the fragments of the 
portrait murmuring, “ Felicity, Felicity, Fe- 
licity.” 

“Oh, don’t 'cair on me, missis. The lad 
is in my heel this minute. I feel I tread him 
down wheresoever I go. Perhaps I never 
more walk without Iwan Wynn crack under 
me— oh. Mistress, Mis-tress ! Is it broke for 
ever or for moments ? Will it mend ? For 
goodness mercy don’t tell Darve Wynn— he is 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


164 

down, waiting for you — or Ae tread my life 
out ; and — ” 

‘‘Have you no mercy?’' asked Gwen. 
“ Go down. Go and tell Darve Wynn not to 
wait I cannot see him.” 

“ Well, indeed, my girl, you are not yourself 
enough — and I would not have him know for 
all the money in Denbigh,” said Felicity, and 
she left the room. 

“Where has Uncle Iwan ‘gone’?” asked 
Mark huddling nearer Gwen, who was still on 
her knees. 

“ Bless you, my boy ! ” she exclaimed with 
a ring of real relieving joy in the cry. “ Bless 
you ! — Uncle Iwan is at rest, at peace ; he is 
not ill now, no cough, no pain, .... no pain 
. . . but let us be quiet, ... let us be still. 
Love Auntie Gwen ! Yes, love poor Auntie,” 
she repeated drawing him yet closer, and they 
remained for some time in each other’s em- 
brace. 


IVORB FROM BRVN-NANT, 165 

***>»*** 

Most of that night Gwen lay in bed far, far 
beyond the influence of Mark’s feeble powers 
of solace. Such grief was to him a mystery. 
Her unprovoked weeping for something that 
was miles and miles away was to him inexplic- 
able. Nevertheless that night aged Mark’s 
feelings. For many hours he wept with her ; 
and awoke at early dawn next morning five or 
six years older. Auntie Gwen was dearer to 
him ; and he was dearer to Auntie Gwen. As 
they reclined, awake, Gwen spoke quietly of 
Uncle I wan. She spoke of him as having 
‘"gone,” she again spoke of his freedom from 
pain, from lingering weakness, and from anx- 
ious thoughts. Induced by her own candid 
words, Mark asked her simple childish ques- 
tions about Death, and Life, and Love; and 
Gwen in the same simple child-like spirit an- 
swered him. 

“ And whose sweetheart will you have to be 


1 66 SWEETHEART GWEN. 

now, Auntie ?” was one of Mark’s questions ; 
but Gwen did not answer it. She hid her face 
upon his shoulder. He felt her shake and he 
put his arms around her head and clasped his 
hands as if for ever. 

Wearied with grief they fell into a second 
sleep ; and they slept until the brilliance of the 
sun awoke them to a bright busy autumn 
morning with the reapers among the oats. 


CHAPTER XVL 


CURDS AND V/HEY. 

Two years later, Mark and Peggy were at 
Ty-Cremed for another change of air. 

One afternoon a great low tub was in the 
centre of the dairy kitchen floor and several 
pairs of busy hands about it were breaking 
curds for cheese. Felicity was on her knees 
bobbing her head to and fro in her activity, 
and Peggy was at her side ** helping.” Auntie 
Gwen with her sleeves rolled up her arms, her 
afternoon dress skirt pinned up, and a large 
white apron from her bust to her ankles, was 
superintending : now going to the dairy, and 
now coming back to peep into the boiler and 
into a second low tub, steaming with whey. 

Mark amused himself with a kitten. He 

(167) 


5 IV£E rHEAR T G WEN, 


1 68 

noted Felicity’s to and fro movements, and 
tried to hook the kitten’s claws in the spiral 
top-knot of her hair. He was successful sev- 
eral times, and though Felicity called him “ a 
torments,” and told him to take that old kit- 
ten from her “ cheese in the making,” she now 
and then pushed her head more forward than 
she had need, then pretended to be very much 
afraid of the kitten and jerked back to tempt 
him to be daring. When he almost lost his 
balance into the tub, she sprang to snatch the 
kitten from his hands, causing him to jump 
back with a merry tittering laugh which Auntie 
Gwen, Peggy, and Felicity quite enjoyed. 

Mark therefore became more daring. He 
reached forward with a rapidly improving aim 
for Felicity’s top-knot. He at last made such 
an uncommonly good aim that Felicity made 
an uncommonly vigorous attempt to catch him. 
He went reeling backward, laughing — reeling 
further and further — reeling too far — and Fe- 


CURDS AND WHEY. 169 

licity rose with a shriek, thrusting out her 
arms though she stood helplessly still. A 
steaming splash ! — and Mark’s merriest laugh 
was changed to a scream in the tub of hot 
whey. 

Gwen snatched him dripping from the tub, 
almost tore most of his clothes off, but dread- 
ing delay sped with him to the dairy and 
lifted him into a tall mug of butter-milk up 
to his breast. 

Felicity paced in and out of the place, be- 
wailing that she never meant “ scalded death 
to be by her own hands and her fun as inno- 
cent as a baby not yet born.” 

Gwen, active, but with tears rolling down 
her cheeks, told Felicity not to go crying and 
parading there, but to tell Abram Rees to 
take horse as fast as he could to Denbigh, for 
the doctor. 

Felicity ran from the dairy, through the 
kitchen, and up the farm-yard declaring to 


I/O 


5 IVEE THEAR T G WEN. 


the men — Mark has been drownded in the 
whey, and is this moment splash up to his 
neck in butter-milk— both pale as death ; but, 
what a blessing I churn this morning and so 
give the lad plenty of cold for his heats.” 

Mark was put to bed, and while Gwen sat 
near him, holding his hand and feeling his 
brow, Peggy stood at the window looking 
over the farm fields to the main road to catch 
the first glimpse of the doctor’s horse. Though 
the messenger had only had time to reach 
Denbigh they expected the doctor to be on 
the road. As Mark moaned, Gwen asked 
enough questions to cure him if questions 
could, and now and then ran to the window 
herself to look over the fields to the main 
road with straining eyes. Then she hastened 
to the bed again, cast herself near him. caress- 
ed him, and crooned her sympathy ; but he 
moaned his pain, silent only when he went 
off into a doze very like a faint. 


CURDS AND WHEY, 


171 

Gwen thought of Mark’s father and moth- 
er. Should she send word to them ? He 
was in her charge. She had promised that 
not a breath should harm him : and there he 
was, prostrate, terribly scalded, and, for all she 
knew, dying. She bent over him, she felt his 
hot forehead, she took his limp hand between 
her two, and as she again crooned over him, 
he feebly kissed her cheek. But it was such 
a faint and feeble kiss, with closed eyes ! Oh, 
she had even made his kisses ill and killed his 
very glances. 

“Dear, dear Mark!” she murmured; and 
Mark feebly muttered, Aun — tie.” • 

“ Yes ?” she said eagerly, but, in his wan- 
dering, his lips only moved inaudibly to the 
form of '‘Auntie — Auntie.” 

It was merely the silent shade of the word, 
and Gwen dreaded the hint. 

“Any sign of Doctor Price, Peggy?” im- 
plored Gwen. 


72 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


No,” answered Peggy impatiently, flash- 
ing her dark eyes from the landscape to the 
bed, and from the bed to the landscape again, 
as if she would create a doctor by her 
glance. 

Felicity, miserable, ventured up to the bed- 
room door, peeped in and entered on tip-toe, 
unseen by Gwen, who was nestling by Mark. 
She peeped over Gwen’s form to the boy’s. 
In a whisper, as of dead leaves, she said, “ He 
is dead-pale — isn’t he, missis ? ” 

Gwen, startled, suddenly rose and unable to 
bear the ghostly whisper and presence, deci- 
sively pointed to the door. 

“ Thank goodness, missis, you did the whey 
yourself,” said Felicity retreating, “ but bless- 
ings on us, I had good butter-milk all ready 
or — ” and Gwen closed the door on the 
voice, and went to the window. She saw, 
just as Peggy saw, the speck of a man on 
horseback at a great distance on the main 


CURDS AND WHEY. 1 73 

road. He was hidden now and then by the 
groups of trees and the over-grown hedge ; 
but emerged each time a little larger and 
more definite, and Gwen in her thankfulness 
lifted Peggy on the chair and embraced her 
as they stood watching. 

Peggy was all exclamation and rapture. 
The doctor’s presence alone would relieve 
Mark at once. 

But the doctor could only anoint Mark 
with oil and lay him in a nest of lint, and to 
Peggy’s and Gwen’s discomfiture M^ark in- 
stantly became worse instead of better, for 
his blisters began to burn more fiercely and 
to smart more keenly. 

“ You must be a good little fellow,” said 
the doctor, covering Mark and his cries with 
the bed-clothes. A brave, patient little man, 
and get well and play with your sister Peggy 
again.” 

Taking up his tall rough beaver hat and 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


174 

riding-whip he left the room, and Gwen fol- 
lowed. 

Down-stairs they had a brief consultation. 
He warned her that all depended upon the 
nursing and the boy’s patience. He had most 
serious scalds around his hips and about his 
thighs, and the shock had made him feverish. 
He certainly wanted very great care. 

Gwen hardly realised that the doctor was 
shaking hands with her, and saying, “ Good- 
afternoon. I’ll be here in the morning. Ap- 
ply the oil. Good-day.” 

When the doctor rode away Gwen con- 
signed Peggy to P'elicity in the dairy, and 
hastened up-stairs to Mark ; and for many a 
night and day she lived there, nursing him. 


CHAPTER XVII. 


PERFORMANCES. 

Mark nestled in lint for several weeks, 
Gwen, Nain, and Peggy nursed ; Felicity 
brought him new milk ; the doctor brought 
him physic ; Darve brought him troutlets ; 
Abram Rees prayed on Sunday nights with a 
little gathering of ‘^hands’’ in the kitchen; 
and Elias Lewis regularly sent o/er a packet 
of sweets on the morning following the Den- 
bigh market day. 

But Mark continued seriously ill and was 
so strange one Saturday night while Nain 
was there that Gwen, at last giving way, cried 
out — “ I’ll send for his mother !” 

“ Indeed no, no, my girl. Mareea could do 

no more than we do, and what of it then ? 

(■ 75 ) 


176 SWEETHEART GWEN. 

Why — well, it is no use ! Poor Mareea ! she 
little think what is keep them ; and tell the 
truth I wouldn’t like such deceptions myself. 
But it is better, and for the world don’t send 
her one notion of what is. I’ll take the chil- 
dren home myself, please God, and all be 
well, and tell everything when no harm come 
of it.” 

'‘Very well,” said Gwen, “but I do wish he 
would show some signs. He doesn’t eat, and 
he has gone so thin.” 

“ Bless you, he will plump up again bet- 
ter than never, you will see. And a better 
lad couldn’t be for sickness, and bear.it. A 
lamb is patience they say, but he is as good 

as two, in his wools, bless him ! ” 

******* 

It was a wearisome watching, between hope 
and fear; and Mark was so dormant for so 
long that if he only turned up his dimmed 
eyes to her, Gwen was thankful and proud. 


PERFORMANCES, 


177 


Many a night she reclined in her clothes be- 
side him. Sometimes weariness overcame her 
and she slept ; and when she awoke she gazed 
at him wildly, dreading the worst, for she 
had a haunting responsibility which followed 
her even into her dreams. 

One eventful and historical noon, Mark 
called “for one of those little fishes” for his 
dinner. A thrill of delight travelled from the 
room, down the stairs, through the kitchen, 
up the yard to the barn and the stables ; and 
it was Auntie Gwen who conveyed it. 

“Mark has asked for fish — fish! Jacob 
Jones! David Thomas! Go down— catch 
troutlets — run the dam dry — bring the first 
you take — quick now!” were Gwen’s flying 
orders, and Jacob Jones and David Thomas 
hastened down to the stream. 

Three silver troutlets were caught. Mark 
saw them before they were cooked — and after. 
He ate one, he sat up in bed, he spoke to 


12 


178 


5 IVEE THEAR T G WEN. 


Gwen about the kitten, and Felicity, and the 
tub. He asked if Uncle Darve had caught 

O 

the fish, and later on he asked where were all 
the sweets that Mr. Lewis had sent. 

From that day Mark improved. The doc- 
tor said so, Nain confirmed the doctor. Bet 
confirmed Nain, Darve swore it. Felicity said 
it was “ now ridiculousness for the missis to 
be so anxious,” Peggy was allowed to ap- 
proach the bed, and Mark’s pale face began 
to smile. 

In the course of time he did more. When- 
ever the bed-room door opened his covetous 
eye enquired — Troutlets ! ” or Cakes ? ” 
“or Jelly?” “ or anything else?” andthatlook 
of his established the rule that nobody except 
Gwen should enter the room without brino-ino* 

o 

a tribute to the little Csesar. Men and wom- 
en, young men and maidens, and children, 
whether paying visits of congratulation, of 
sympathy, or of inspection, loyally paid toll, 


PERFORMANCES. 


179 

and placed their tributes virtually at the feet 
of the little monarch in bed, hut really on a 
little table at the side. 

Mark day by day beheld his sweetmeats 
with a better appetite, his toys with livelier 
fun, and his accumulated wealth of pence (for 
some gave cjin) with a keener appreciation : 
a sure sign to all that he was beginning to feel 
the world about him again. 

In due course he sat with Gwen, Peggy, 
and Nain, at the bed-room window, looking 
out upon the fields now mainly dotted with 
lines and curves of sheaves, watching the carts 
pass to and fro, now laden with sheaves, now 
empty, and now laden again. 

Nor was he short of entertainment up in 
that room. Peggy usually carried up Kitten 
Topsy, and with a frill around its neck, and a 
skirt about its body, the little thing was nursed 
out of its own species into her own, and had 
to behave as such. Gwen sometimes gave a 


i8o 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


long whistle of invitation to Nelson, and if the 
staircase door happened to be open, he bounded 
up in mad delight, first paying court to his 
mistress and then to Mark by licking their 
hands and pawing their knees. If Peggy had 
Topsy on her knee. Nelson simply gav^e her a 
polite retreating bow. Sometimes he came 
up without being whistled and looked around 
the door with beseeching eyes, and if Gwen 
kept him waiting too long he moved along the 
wall, crouched under the bed, travelled from 
the head to the foot, and lifting the valance 
with his nose, renewed his appeal there— but 
in wonderful readiness to be at the door first 
if Gwen should disapprove and rise. 

It?was over one of those rushing races for 
the door on the part of Nelson and Gwen, 
that Mark had his first hearty laugh, and 
Gwen repeated it so often to please him that 
instead of Nelson making for the door he be- 
gan to bound and bark about Gwen, as much as 


PERFORMANCES. 


to say, “ If it’s fun you want, come, we’ll have 
some ! ” — and after that they had fun with him 
almost every day. Nelson indeed, between 
Gwen, Mark, and Peggy, had a busy time 
of it. 

The most glorious events of the period of 
Mark’s convalescence were Auntie Gwen’s 
wonderful and daring performances with the 
Great Russian Bear, the African Lion, and 
the* Royal Bengal Tiger— otherwise Nelson. 
The performances were impromptu, never twice 
alike and always full of wonderful doings to 
be wonderfully described by Mark and Peggy 
to the next visitor, — how Nelson stretched 
himself up the bed-post, wagged his tail and 
barked, without daring to come down un jl he 
had word from Gwen ; how he would lie down 
and let Gwen put her foot on his neck, pull his 
tail, and tickle the pads of his paws ; how he 
mounted and vaulted chairs and sprang after 
Gwen, pawing her forward till she commanded 


1 82 -S ' WEETHEART G WEN. 

him to “ Stand off ! ” how she trained him in a 
small den between the chest of drawers and 
the wall, where he had to sit up — and growl 
and shew his teeth — and give his paw — and 
allow the daring and indomitable trainer to 
place her bare arm in his mouth ; and how the 
performance was usually brought to a close 
with a beautiful tableau — Gwen, panting and 
red, with one knee on the Hoor, receiving the 
noble beast’s fore-paws on the other knee, her 
arm around his neck, his tongue dangling, and 
his eyes glaring with a pride too ecstatic to 
bear without giving it expression in an occa- 
sional bark in her face. 

Yes, they were marvellous performances : 
performances never since approached, Mark 
declares, for spontaneity, freshness, and excite- 
ment, b)' any performance with real bears, lions, 
or tigers behind the bars of any Royal Grand 
Menagerie; as no performer, black or white, 
has since equalled Auntie Gwen for personal 


PERFORMANCES. 


183 


beauty, for alertness, for invention, and noble 
daring. And as for the final tableau where 
the beast was won by love and not by pistols, 
why, in place of the common clapping of 
hands, Mark always ran from his seat and ap- 
plauded Gwen with a rapturous hug and kiss. 
He was followed by Peggy, the three of them 
were pawed by Nelson into a laughing heap, 
and the end would be a final scramble and roll 
on the floor, where Nain would come and 
startle them into decorum again. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


HOME. 

Mark and Peggy were so long over-due at 
home that their mother began to suspect some- 
thing was wrong. Nain was to bring them 
at once; and Nain, soon after that, obeyed 
the command and took the children home. 

On the following morning Mark awoke in 
his old bed-room in his original home. He 
was disappointed. He went down stairs ; and 
was more disappointed still. There was some- 
thing wrong about the place. His father and 
mother, his sister Peggy, and a new baby 
brother, were there ; but they and the house 
fell short of a certain standard of a larger and 
more varied existence. He ill-humouredly 
made social, domestic, and personal contrasts 

(184) 


HOME. 185 

that were not complimentary to his surround- 
ings. Where was the dairy ? And the inex- 
haustible milk ? And the shippon ? And the 
stables? And the cart shed with the fowls? 
And the store attic with the apples and the 
pears? And where, aye, where was Auntie 
Gwen ? And Nelson ? And Madam and the 
gig? And the rabbit pies? And the milky 
rice puddings? Where! In an inaccessible 
world beyond the great sea which the Rhyl 
Packet crossed ; and he was depressed. 

His mother, quick and sympathetic, noted 
the dullness of the lad. She noted it for sev- 
eral days and then remarked about it to his 
father — and his father devoted his nights to 
the making of a wonderful kite the shape of a 
man. The kite went up the sky, Mark “ held ” 
it and rejoiced, the kite came down again ; 
and Mark’s spirits too. 

At last Mark’s mother asked what ailed 
him ? What did he want ? He was too 


1 86 .S’ WEETHEAR T G WEN. 

ashamed to tell, and whenever alone, he play- 
ed little dramatic episodes and games in his 
fancy — episodes in which Auntie Gwen took 
the first part, he the second, and Nelson and 
Madam the third, the properties of the little 
mental drama now and then being augmented 
by the introduction of some ideal pudding or 
pie, or some especially fine roasted apple of 
the past. Then came the somehow convinc- 
ing secret expectation that every knock at 
the front door — the knock of the postman, 
of the chip girl, of the fish-hawker or of the 
tinker — was Gwen’s ; and then the disillusion 
again ! 

One day, many months later. Auntie Gwen 
came. To Mark it was a miracle, and he 
leapt to her embrace and would not release 
her even to allow Peggy a chance to greet 
her as well. 

How beautiful, fresh, and buoyant she look- 
ed ! Her figure was even more lithe, a little 


HOME, 187 

taller, with more vivacity in the movements ; 
and yet, with all the old ease-seeking lounge, 
as if by a nestling movement out of one easy 
position into another still easier, she re-cast 
the sofa corner into a nest for her form. And 
as he beheld the Auntie Gwen of the enchant- 
ed past lounging there he ran to her inviting 
voice, her inviting arms, and to her rewarding 
hug and kiss, like a spirit to its home. 

But it was an angel’s visit. She bewitched 
him — and went. She stayed five hours, as a 
fact ; but when she had gone, the hours shrank 
into the compass of a moment. Finally, that 
moment went out like a light and he had but 
a haunting dream to mock his eyes, his arms, 
his lips. 


END OF PART I. 



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CHAPTER 1. 


AN EVENTFUL TIME. 

The years of boyhood went, and the years 
of youth came. Mark had left school and 
was in an office on the Liverpool Exchange. 

The first annual holiday he had was a great 
event and could only be rightly consecrated 
at Ty-Cremed. He went there, and a most 
eventful time it was. His Auntie Gwen, 
whom he had not seen for several years, was 
more than all he had imagined of her. To 
his joy her ardent interest in him had not 
ceased. She could not do enough for him. 
As the faithful Felicity said — It was Mark 
everything, and everything was Mark, and 
Mark was no end.” 

'' And why not ? ” answered Gwen. 

(191) 


192 


5 JV££ THEAR T G WEN, 


He had the pick of last year’s apples ; he 
had nuts ; he had a new-laid egg beaten up in 
milk every morning ; he was served first at 
the table — and last too, when the rice-pudding 
was exceptionally good. Gwen sat lounging 
with him on the sofa after dinner, went ram- 
bling in the afternoon, linked her arm through 
his and took him beyond the orchard to the 
wood where he was once lost ; or she drove 
him in the high gig to Denbigh, St. Asaph, 
Rhuddlan, and Rhyl ; and visited friends to 
whom she proudly introduced him. 

But one historical afternoon there came 
to Ty-Cremed a woman, a neighbour. She 
brought with her Sadness, and she. Sadness, 
and Gwen, sat talking very gravely in Welsh 
by the farm kitchen fire. They spoke of the 
deadly cattle distemper that was then spread- 
ing from shippon to shippon throughout the 
Vale. It had been creeping round and round, 
binding Ty-Cremed in a belt of ravaging dis- 


AN EVENTFUL TIME. I93 

ease. Gwen was sorely afraid that it had at 
last circled in upon them, for “Blacken had 
taken suddenly ill. The farrier had been sent 
for, Felicity, she, and the men, had done all 
they could for the poor beast, and now they 
had only to wait. 

After the visitor had gone Gwen sat in the 
arm-chair, gazing into the fire— heedless of 
everything but anxiety. Because of this, 
Mark joined Felicity Robartch as she was go- 
ing with an earthenware pan of milk to a 
motherless foal, a sprightly and vain young 
thing on stilts of legs, that knew Felicity like 
a personal friend. They had only to cross 
the farm-yard to a wall, where Mark, to get 
a good view of the operations, mounted some 
roughly piled logs near the saw pit. Felicity 
then fixed the pan on the wall for Mark to 
hold, and wooingly called, “ Twe, twe— twe, 
twe, twe.” 

The foal came prancing down the field like 

13 


194 


5 IVEE THEAR T G WEN. 


a long-legged lamb frisking from hind feet to 
fore feet, now rearing as if to climb the air, 
and shaking its head there, and now bound- 
ing forward proud of the accomplishment 
Its legs, however, were apparently half a 
yard longer than it was aware of, for after 
one of those upward flights the fore feet 
touched earth with a jerking trip which sent 
him on his knees in a sort of forced grace 
before he reached the wall ; but righted again, 
he trotted towards the dish of milk with an 
ecstatic wag of its pretty head and a neigh of 
gratitude. Twe, twe,” Felicity muttered, 
and lo ! quite a spasm of pride seized the 
creature, up it reared as if to mount the wall, 
brought down its hoof on the dish, smashed 
it, and splashed most of the milk over Mark. 
He fell between the logs where nettles grew 
tall and thick, and by the time Felicity extri- 
cated him, his face, neck, and hands had all 
the symptoms of sickening for the measles. 


AN EVENTFUL TIME. 


195 

Felicity did what she could for him, but he 
sought Gwen. 

Scarcely had Gwen wheeled one end of the 
sofa nearer the fire for him and herself, when 
Felicity ran through the dairy and the back 
kitchen into the front kitchen, wringing her 
hands and wailing. 

Mistress ! mistress ! Black’en is dead ! 
Black’en is gone ! ” 

Gwen rose, and stood by the sofa-arm, 
flushed with torture. 

“ Not Black’en !” she cried, moving a step 
forward, then standing with her palms to her 
eyes, she murmured — “ My Black’en ; my 
best—” 

'' Without a breath or a move, mistress ; 
as good dead as a stone, if dead can be good, 
in the likes of this ! And such a beauty of a 
beast ; as good as ever turned grass to milk. 
Oh, mistress, mistress, what does the Almighty 
mean with the farmers, as feed His own cattle 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


196 

on His own grounds ? Three at the Pandy, 
four at the Crosses, five at Isycoed, and now 
our Black’en to begin with !” 

Gwen ran with Felicity to the shippon. 

At the sight of the beautiful glossy black 
cow dead in its stall, Gwen fell on her knees 
near its head, patting it, fitting her half-closed 
hand to its ear and caressing it by drawing 
her hand to and fro, while she murmured as 
if to the listening dead — “ My Beauty ! My 
Pet ! Dear Black’en — the flower of them 
all!” 

Felicity moaned to every exclamation, and 
two men stood looking on like the sorrowful 
witnesses of Fate. 

A moan and a heavy fall two stalls away, 
caused the women and men to stand aghast. 

A beautiful roan was on its back, breathing 
heavily. 

‘‘ Lord help us ! ” muttered Gwen. 

“ Indeed, Amen, Mistress dear, Amen 1” 


AN EVENTFUL TIME. 


197 


“ My poor Vixen, now ; my poor Vixen ! 
What, what can I do for you?” asked Gwen, 
helpless ; and as a terrible reply the cow rolled 
on its side dead. 

The farrier was anxious and active; but 
what could he, what could they, what could 
Darve, Elias Lewis, and other neighbours do ? 
The disease defied them all. 

Five of Gwen’s finest dairy cows dropped 
dead in their stalls next day and Mark saw 
them drawn by a couple of horses, out of the 
shippon, up the yard, into a field behind the 
orchard and buried there, while Nip, the yard 
Collie that had so often seen them to and fro 
between the shippon and the fields, followed 
each cow, sniffed enquiringly at the hoofs and 
with its ears drawn and its tail drooped, barked 
in a low mystified way. 

Not a hand on the farm went to bed that 
night. Felicity and Gwen almost lived in the 
shippon, doing what they could in suspected 


198 SWEETHEART GWEN. 

cases ; and the men sat chatting by lantern 
light in the stables, ready for any emergency. 

Two more fine cows fell during the night, 
rending the silence with their thrilling thuds. 
The men heard Felicity’s scream and Gwen’s 
moan and hastened from the stable. Help 
was useless. Nothing could be done but to 
bury the poor beasts in the graves dug in 
readiness. Two horses were roused from their 
sleep. Their chains jingled and chinked on 
the quiet midnight air from the stables to the 
shippon, making the cock on the cart shed 
rafters mistake the night for the day, and the 
two latest victims were dragged from their 
stalls, drawn up the yard to the field beyond 
the orchard, and buried by lantern-light and 
shadow, and the light of the tranquil stars. 


CHAPTER II. 
gwen’s surrender. 

The shippon began to look desolated. 
Three more cows hung their heads, and 
moaned, and panted as if doomed. At day- 
break enquiring neighbours called. The far- 
rier came with fresh instructions. Gwen, 
Felicity, and the men, earnestly carried them 
out ; but three other beautiful animals were 
dragged up the yard to the field that very day. 
Nip, the Collie, sickened in one of the stalls, 
too ill to follow the third cow ; and at night 
he was dragged with the fourth to his rest be- 
hind the orchard. 

By noon next day, not one of Gwen’s 

twenty fine cows stood in the long shippon. 

The place was now indeed desolated. The 

(199) 


200 


5 IVEE THEAR T G WEN. 


stalls gaped empty and silent. Even the spar- 
rows had deserted them. The chains and 
rings around the posts were there ; the shining 
marks made by the habitual movements of the 
cows on the pine posts and the partitions of 
the stalls ; the half-empty low racks and the 
troughs were there; the sweet and ghostly 
odour was there ; and above each rack was a 
name — Black-one; Beauty; Vixen; Primrose; 
Red Ear ; Queen ; Princess ; Gwen ; Ann’s 
Own ; Fairy ; Angel ; Bright-Eye ; etc., — but 
each name was now only a mockery, for every 
cow on Gwen’s farm was in the earth and un- 
der lime. 

Not only the shippon, but the house was 
desolated. The whole farm was. The men 
worked with languid, half-hearted movements. 
Felicity appeared absolutely witless amcng her 
milkless pails and pans, and the sight of the 
empty stalls which she could not resist going to 
see at milking time made her crazy with sobs. 


G WEN'S SURRENDER. 


201 


Gwen, in her grief, sat with her feet on the 
kitchen fender gazing into the fire. Now and 
then with her head bent in her hands she cried 
the names of her lost ones : “ My Black’en, 
my Vixen, and Primrose, and Bright-Eye, and 
Angel, and Fairy, and Gwen ! — ” and buried 
her face in her lap. 

Mark bent his face cl ^se to hers and a tran- 
quillity like comfort came to both. 

While they were in the trance of that tran- 
quillity, a knock at the front door startled 
Mark, and caused Gwen to turn her dress 
skirt from over her knees down to her feet 

again She did not rise to answer the 

door, however. Her grief again took hold of 
her and she sat gazing it into the fire. 

A more elaborate knock roused her and she 
went to the door, followed by Mark. 

The door was opened — to let in a pause of 
embarrassment and to let out a pause of sur- 
prise. 


202 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


The silence was broken by the faltering 
voice of a tall, smooth-faced young man of 
thirty-three, in knee breeches. 

“ I called. Miss Gwinell, to see — 

“ Come— in,— Mr. Lewis.” 

‘‘ Thank you — I — er — I — ” 

^‘Take a seat,” said Gwen indicating the 
sofa and moving her chair from the front of 
the fire. 

They were face to face with the length of 
the long fender between them. 

“ Well, young gentleman, how are you en- 
joying your holiday.^” Elias Lewis asked 
Mark, leaning forward with his elbow on his 
knees and twirling his hat between his hands. 

Mark only sighed as he stood by Gwen 
with his arm along the back of her chair. 

“You seem in trouble like the most of us, 
little man ; though it is early for yours to be- 
gin You haven’t been over to see me 

yet. I’ve a fine little pony that would just fit 


GIVEN 'S SURRENDER. 


203 


you. . , Yes, these are hard times, Miss 

Gvvinell. Isacoed has lost two more fine 
beasts, and three have fallen at Talyfoel, and 
five are hanging their heads at Hugh Roche’s. 
I came over to see if I could be of any help.” 

Gwen became uneasy and looked into her 
black afternoon apron. 

I — er — I know you have your own man 
and plenty of hands ; but I have two capital 
milkers all right. I’ll send their yield over — 
for your own use — to keep you going —until you 
get straight again — I’ll send it with pleasure.” 

Gwen’s thoughts went back eight years. 
What indignities she had subjected this same 
Elias Lewis to ! — and yet here he was in the 
hour of need the bearer of a generous offer. 

But the obligation would mean visits and 
enquiries. She halted. 

“ Now don’t think it any trouble. I’ll only 
be too glad ; or if there is anything else I can 
do, say the word. Miss Gwinell.” 


204 


SWEETHEART GWEN, 


“No, thank you. I’ll wait,” said Gwen, 
and to occupy herself, drew Mark to her and 
fondled him. 

“Why, why,” thought Elias Lewis, “does 
she do such an exquisitely galling act before 
his eyes ; why lavish on a mere boy who 
stood like an unresponding post, caresses that 
every nerve of his would have leapt to 
meet.” 

A flush passed up his pale, bare face ; Gwen 
happened to see it, and a pallor instantly 
spread over hers. 

“ Let me do something ! ” he entreated with 
resolution. “ Anything at all, in any way you 
please. Let me send the milkings — for the 
house, for your own use, until you get into 
your regular way again.” 

“ I — have — arranged,” faltered Gwen. But 
in the honest company of his generosity her 
falsehood became ashamed of itself. Her pal- 
lor quickly changed to a fierce blush and she 


GWEN’S SURRENDER. 


205 

added, ‘'Well, not exactly arranged; but I 
have thought of it.” 

“ Then you must have thought of me ; 
for mine is the only clear dairy in the dis- 
trict.” 

That thought had not been near her ; she 
was still more confused, still more ashamed. 

“ You can arrange it with me now,” he con- 
tinued good-humouredly. “ Say the milkings 
of two cows a day, until further notice ? . . . . 
What do you say, young man? You would, 
wouldn’t you? Don’t stand on ceremony. 
Miss Gwinell. It will be no trouble ; none at 
all. I’ll only be too glad.” 

“ Very well — thank you,” said Gwen, glad 
to moderate the heat of her fierce blush by 
the cooling satisfaction of a little truth, and to 
cover her surrender she gave Mark an impul- 
sive kiss. 

Elias Lewis bit his own envious lower lip and 
tried to smile at Mark, released from Gwens 


2o6 sweetheart GWEN. 

embrace. Fingering his vest pocket he 
tempted Mark to the sofa by the glittering 
exposure of a sixpence. He gave Mark the 
coin, patted him on the shoulder — and kissed 
him. 

“ You two kissed just the same spot,” said 
Mark looking for the date of the coin. '' It’s 
a i860. Auntie Gwen.” 

If ever a young woman ardently wanted to 
give out her exasperation in one long adequate 
pinch, it was Gwen at that moment ; and be- 
cause Elias Lewis had submitted her to that 
awful trial by following her own foolish act 
with a still more foolish one, she decided that 
he would have to keep his milk. Annoyed 
with herself, with him, and with Mark, she 
stooped pretending to fasten her shoe lace, 
and wished the man would go. 

Before Gwen had quite done with h^r lace. 
Felicity appeared at the kitchen door. She 
summoned all her breath to exclaim — 


GWEN'S SURRENDER. 


207 


Mr. Levvyis? You quite ’stonish me 
“ And how you, Felicity Robartch ?*’ he 
asked. 

Well as can be ; well as a body can be in 
these death’s days. What about milk — eh — 
Mistress? We must ’range somewhere for it. 
There’s the foal and two calves and say noth- 
ing of ourselves.” 

“ I am to send you the milkings of two 
cows,” said Elias Lewis. 

“ Well, well ! And when can we have the 
first, Mr. Lewyis ? Those calves cry shame on 
me for give them oatmeals and water — ” 

“ Perhaps you will both mind your own 
business ! ” said Gwen, rising from her stoop- 
ing position, standing ruffled and fiery. 

“ Well, indeed, mistress, it’s more than cow s 
milk, it’s the milk of human goodness for Mr. 
Lewyis to come to us at this scarce time ; and 
where else on the wide earth of the Vale can 
we get milkings for woman, boy, and beast?” 


2o8 “S’ IVEE THEAR T G WEN, 

“ Will you mind your own business, Felicity 
Robartch ?” 

“ Whose else business is it, my good mis- 
stress?” said Felicity likewise losing her tem- 
per, though standing stiff and erect on her 
pattens, “ whose else business in truth is it 
but for a dairy woman to mind after milk ? I 
can’t teat it from pan-mugs and slabs — and the 
stones — and the walls, and I’ll not live me 
here to have the calves and that fool of a foal 
cry on me asleep and wake, and wake and 
sleep ; and that’s truth for you. Why, I heard 
’em in my sleeps last night — heard, I did, till 
I milk my own fingers and thumb for ’em and 
’tis no trifle to milk a full shippon of twenty 
cows on one s dreaming hands like that in one’s 
bit of sleep — and all for nothing. If there was 
bed of milk in the morning I wouldn’t mind. 
.... Let goodness bless us, my dear mistress ! 
— for peace’s own sakes let us have what we 
can get, and more if possible, or send you the 


GWEN'S SURRENDER. 20g 

calves to the butcher, and the foal to the tan- 
ner, and me to that orchard field, for indeed I 
have a cattle complaints for the want of ’em, 
myself. Yes, you may laugh, Elias Levvyis, but 
it’s truth ; and you, mistress, too. It s a pity 
that one as has been ’customed to go to twenty 
cows, can’t catch sight of a drop of milk ’less 
I dream of it, and it all go for nothing when I 
wake ; and my pans and pails gape at me quite 
ready to go to the shippon, if it was of use, poor 
things. Why, this very morning at shippon 
time like nothing else but ears round the 
dairy, was they, list’ning for the usual fall of 
milk into ’em, and behold you— behold you. 
Mistress and Mr. ’Lias Lewyis— the only wet 
sound as fall in one of ’em this morning was a 
suddent drop of my own tear — truth ! — and I 
near go beside my own wits with frights, for I 
thought— and the Lord forgive me— the Al- 
mighty was making miracle of milk out of my 
own eye. Truth ; indeed truth ! (Gwen re. 


14 


210 


5 IV£E THEAR T G WEN. 


mained silent), goodness bless us, Mr. Levvyis ! 
— let us have what we can get and be thank- 
ful. Mistress here is fret too much to think. 
Can you send this afternoon, my good man ? 
Listen ! — let your own ears hear those calves 
now for yourself. ’Tis milk they want, though 
I know this minute their nose^ is white with 
good meals and water.” 

In half an hour,” he said, rising and mov- 
ing away. 

“ Make it a quarter — if you can — there’s my 
good man — I will have a sort of thirst myself 
till it come.” 

'‘You are too expecting. Felicity,” said 
Gwen. 

“ No, no,” he replied, opening the front 
door for himself, and before Gwen realized 
that he was going, he went. 

“Well, indeed. Missis,” said Felicity, “he’s 
a good heart after all.” 

Gwen did not condescend to reply and 


GWEN'S SURRENDER, 


21 1 

immediately went up-stairs, keenly eyed by 
Mark. 

“And what is that money-piece you have, 
Mark?” asked Felicity. “Not a sixpence? 
Well, yes, truth ; and who gave you that, my 
boy?” 

“ Mr. Lewis.” 

“ Mr. Lewyis — did he ? And you like Mr. 
Lewyis ? ” 

“ Not much.” 

“ Why, my lad ?” 

“ Because Auntie Gwen doesn’t.” 

“ Bless us ! ” muttered Felicity— “ But you 
like him ’nough to take his money.” 
“’Twashim.” 

“ Don’t you mistake, my boy,” she said in a 
lower tone and with her eye on the staircase 
door. “He didn’t give it to you'' 

“ Yes, he did.” 

“ Yes, yes, in your hand ; but not to you," 
“To me, myself.” 


212 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


“ No ; not to you, nor yourself.” 

Felicity Robartch, he did ! ” 

“ Mark — Mark Whatever-your-name-is — he 
didn’t. You think so, my clever fellow ; but 
you’re not clever by half enough. You think 
so; but Ae doesn’t. I’ll be bound. And I 
wouldn’t have a thing that wasn’t give proper 
to me myself.” 

It was. I ought to know.” 

“ How know you, wise man ? Ha, ha ! 
Ha, ha, Aa ! He you it ? and kissj^^^.^ 
There’s where you twice mistake Elias Lewyis. 
Kiss you ? Kiss nonsense ! I guarantee you, 
it was not you he kiss at all,” she said turning 
to go. 

“ Why, it was ! ” 

You think ^ was.’ I don’t care if my own 
eyes see his kiss cross and double on your very 
cheek, I not believe he kiss you, in his heart. 
And who’d have kiss and sixpence as not be- 
long to ’em ! Mark, my lad, you are only 


G WEN'S SURRENDER. 2 1 3 

half old, you be older just now — if you’re not 
too simpled hearted to live. Why, I would 
knock Elias Lewyis on the mouth if he prac- 
tice on me what his mind give somebody else. 
You are not full born in this world yet, though 
you are town bred ! ” said Felicity laughing a 
fiendish, fool-making laugh. “ Not full born 
yet, my lad, but you’re eyes open some day and 
then you’ll ’member what Felicity Robartch 
mean. For the present your Auntie like two 
sweethearts to her bow — one old one, and one 
young one ; one to think of and one to her 
hands — looks like it, whatever — and you are 
young grindstone to sharp their both lips on. 
Oh, Mark, innocents, you live and learn ; you 
live and learn yet!” and with a laugh she 
went to the dairy, and left Mark miserable. 
There was something in what that mysterious 
all-seeing Felicity had said, for Auntie Gwen 
was vexed with him ; Auntie Gwen was vexed ! 
He was wretched. 


CHAPTER III. 


WHAT MARK DID. 

The staircase door was opened, and he went 
to the bottom of the stairs and listened. He 
could only hear a wasp buzzing about the land- 
ing and in and out of one of the rooms. It was 
not Gwen’s room, because her door was closed. 
He could tell that by the absence of a certain 
patch of light from the dark landing wall. 
He was afraid to call “Auntie Gwen!” 
and slowly went to the sofa-arm. He stood 
leaning against it. The sixpence was almost 
burning a hole through his hand. He was 
tempted to throw it into the fire — but a pro- 
phetic vision of the market value of the coin 
in Liverpool, warned him not to be rash. 

But Auntie Gwen ? He had not seen her 

(214) 


WHA T MARK DID. 


215 

look so annoyed before. He had somehow 
vexed her. 

“ Mark ! 

“ Yes ! yes ?” he gratefully answered, going 
to the bottom of the stairs, “Yes?” he called 
again. 

But there was no response. The landing was 
exactly as it was before — the wasp still buzz- 
ing to and fro, and no light from Gwen s room. 

He was sure he had heard her voice. It 
sounded on the stair — at the stairs door — yes, 
at his ear. 

It was, indeed, at his ear; but at the inner 
side of it, for the sound was one of those ven- 
triloquial effects of the fancy by means of 
which the fancy tricks the heart with phantas- 
mal sounds of a voice that is dear. 

He was afraid to ascend, and again called 
up the staircase ; but no answer came. A 
galling dejection weighed upon him. Auntie 
Gwen vexed ? He turned away, with all his 


2i6 


SWEETHEART GWEN, 


thoughts and feelings rushing to his throat, 
and went to the window. The glass was 
bleared, the whole sky was bleared, the whole 
world was — and he bent over the table. 

In the next moment he was on the stairs — 
going up them —by the time he reached her 
bed-room door the emotion had gathered all 
its force, he was in its power, it made him 
shout ‘ Auntie! Auntie Gwen!” — it flung 
him against the door — it opened the door — it 
brought Gwen from her imprisonment. 

“ My boy, my dear, dear Mark !” she cried 
kneeling and clasping him, pressing her face 
near his and cooing petting terms of endear- 
ment into his ear. “ What is to do ? ” 

“ I thought you was — vexed.” 

“ Vexed ? What about, Mark ?” she asked, 
rising, leading him into the room and closing 
the door. 

“ This,” he replied, exposing the sixpence 
on his palm. “ You — you — looked cross.” 


IVHA T MARK DID. 


217 


“ Not at you, Mark.” 

** And I couldn’t help him giving it. But I 
don’t want it, I wish I never had it, I do. 
And if you had only looked cross then.^ or 
nudged me — then I’d have known. I didn’t 
know you would not like me to have it. I 
thought you would have been glad to see me 
get it, but you wasn’t — you — ” 

“ What on earth does the boy mean ? ” 
muttered Gwen. “ You’ve been thinking 
your little head crazy, Mark.” 

No, I haven’t,” gasped Mark as the old 
emotion rushed back and his head sank on 
Gwen’s shoulder, hardly knowing what he did 
mean. Here ! ” he cried, trying to force the 
coin into her hands. Here, take it !” 

** I don’t want it, Mark.” 

Then I don’t ! ” he said, hurling the coin 
from his hands, and it rolled under the 
bed. 

Come, come, Mark, you have been fret- 


2i8 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


ting too much about this ; far too much. 
Listen — ” 

“ But you looked vexed ; and at me. At 
me, you did.” 

“ I’m not vexed now.” 

“ But you was, Auntie ; that’s the thing. 
You was ; I know you’re not now ; but now 
isn’t then, and it’s then I’m all the time think- 
ing of. I do wish there was no then when it’s 
like that.” 

A brief laugh escaped Gwen. 

“ I do !” said Mark as a reply to it. “ It 
spoils all the rest ; and I have to go home 
to-morrow, and I wanted to go home enjoy- 
ing myself — ” 

“To-morrow? You needn’t go to-mor- 
row.” 

That sobered Mark. He drew himself up, 
stood erect, and in quite a changed boy-of- 
the-world manner he said — “ It’s the office, 
Auntie Gwen ; the office.” 


WHAT MARK DID. 


219 

“ Tut ! answered Gwen, hardly able to 
make her twinkles serious enough. 

But the master expects me. He expects 
me.” 

Not he.” 

“ He does. The day after to-morrow’s the 
— I counted. Oh, I’ll Aave to go. Why, 
if I stayed— but I can’t, I can’t.” 

Pooh ! ” 

“Auntie Gwen! It’s the office! The 
Cotton Brokers’ Association, Brown’s 
Buildings, Studley Martin, Secretary, 
where you’ve been writing, you know. It 
has to be open ; somebody has to be in it ; 
the master can’t go out, unless I’m there.' 

“ Hasn’t he been out for a week, then ?” 

“ He’d have to go out a bit — just a bit.” 

“ Well ; look at that ! ” 

“ Yes, but he’d have to lock-up and put a 
paper on the door or ask the Chamber of 
Commerce next door to listen if anybody 


220 


5 IV£E THEAR T G WEN. 


came ; and they don’t like that too much. 
You know it isn’t every office lad that gets 
a holiday, and as mother says, I mus’n’t abuse 
it. Nine o’clock the day after to-morrow 
morning’s the time, and I’ve promised. Oh, 
I’ll have to go. Auntie — have to !” 

“ And — wouldn’t — you — stay — if — Auntie 
— wanted — you — to ? ” asked Gwen with 
would-be solemn pauses. 

The pauses were so very solemn to Mark 
that most of his reply was in the tremour of 
his lower lip and the appeal of his eyes. 

“ I would. Auntie Gwen — if — you — wanted 
— so — bad — that — I — couldnt go ; but I’ve 
promised. It’s an office open every day, you 
know, nine till five, and they never keep a 
boy back from an office. Just you fancy all 
the office boys kept back, why ! — but you see 
you don’t know offices — don’t keep me. 
Auntie, unless it’s something tremendous, I 
advise you ! Master might get another lad.” 


WHA T MARK DID. 


221 


Then you could stay here altogether,” 
answered Gwen, amused by the commercial 
crisis. 

“Well — yes — but — you see. No, Auntie 
Gwen, I advise you to let me go, for you wouldn’t 
believe how offices expect you up to time.” 

“ But suppose your master doesn’t want 
you ? 

“ Doesn’t want me ? Doesn’t want me ? 
He never gave me the least look like that. 
He’s the Secretary I’ve been with so long, 
Auntie Gwen. I’d sooner come again— some 
other time — ” 

“ But the man doesn’t want you.” 

“ What man ?” 

“ Your master.” 

“ He’s a gentle-man, Auntie Gwen ; why, 
his office has a carpet and all the letters come 
with Esquire on, and they’re all gentlemen as 
come to speak to him, and you should see him 
on the ‘ flags,’ the Exchange, you know, with a 


222 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


note-book, nice little oval things just the size 
of his waistcoat-pocket, with crowds round 
him ; and he comes away fussy and with his 
face all red with business. My word, they do 
crush round him in the afternoons and he 
tells them something that sends them flying. 
I can see it from our window. He tells them 
about the bales of cotton and the prices or 
something.” 

“Well, the ^gentleman,’ then; he doesn’t 
want you. He says so.” 

“ He hasn’t been ? Oh, you’re plaguing ! ” 

“ I have had a letter.” 

'‘From master? — from Studley Martin? 
No, no ! . . . . Let me see ! Yes, that is our 
envelope — he always uses ready stamped ones 
— and our letter paper too ! ” 

“There now, you see. Read it.” 

Mark seized the letter and read it about as 
minutely as a hunter reads the grass it leaps 
“‘ D — r M — d — m,’ ” he mumbled at 


over. 


WHA T MARK DID. 


223 

leaps and bounds, Much pleased, .... enjoy- 
ing himself, . . . need not return until Friday, 
. . . wish it, . . . but not later.’ And you 
wrote, and without asking me ? That’s splen- 
did, — as it happens! Not until Friday; but 
you see he says ' not later than.’ I know why, 
it’s the weekly meeting and I fix the table. 
Yes, this is master’s writing. Isn’t it like a 
daddy-long-leg’s legs ? He writes with a long 
white steel. And he’s had a new one for this 
— see how thin to start with — and he’s had a 
blot. His pens are awful for dropping blots 
when they’re new, it’s like as if they’re greasy. 
But fancy— FTiday— and all through you ! 
See his signature— ‘ Studley Martin ’—I can 
make his S’s and his M’s, when I hold the pen 
high up, like he does, and think I’m him. 
Mother says there’s no knowing, I might be 
some day.” 

“ Well, you might be. Will you stay with 
Auntie Gwen, now.'^” 


224 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


‘'Yes, will I — till Friday. So long as it’s 
all right I’m safe. It was rather a wonder for 
you to write. Wouldn’t I have been afraid if 
I’d known ! I never knew a boy to stay from 
an office unless he died or something like that. 
I once got off for an afternoon to have a tooth 
pulled, because the master couldn’t have me 
moaning about the office. But I much rath- 
ered the office, I can tell you.” 

Mark almost forgot his conflict in the new 
excitement. He and Gwen sat at the window, 
looking across the fields and down the verdant 
vale, ripening in the brilliant but clouded sun- 
light of midsummer. Breezes came through 
the open lattice with the scent of sweet-briar 
and wall-flower, with the tremulous bleating 
of sheep and the cawings of crows ; and soon 
with the earthy odour of rain from the dusty 
road, and fresh fragrance from the grassy land. 
It was only a local shower, and soon over. 
Masses of silver haze crept from between the 


WHA T MARK DID. 


225 


mountains to the vale to gleam there like wan- 
dering systems of sunbeams that had escaped 
from the sun ; while two distinct and brilliant 
rainbows hung like ethereal links to hold the 
jewel of the earth in their clasp. 

Gwen looked up at them. Mark looked up 
at them. They were phenomenally clear in 
line and definite in colour, and Gwen yielding 
to a superstitious impulse that had the pleasure 
of playing with Fate in it, said “ Here, Mark, 
cross wrists and take hold of hands that s it 
—look up at the rainbows — and wish. Don’t 

look down until you have Have 

you ? ” 

‘'Yes, I wished — ” 

Oh, you must not tell me.” 

“Then what did you wish?” he asked. 

“And I must not tell you.’ 

“ I wished for a ‘ rise ’ at the office.” 

“Now! You have spoilt it! We won’t 

get our.wish.” 

15 


226 


S WEETHEAR T G WEN. 


Then if it’s spoiled, you might as well tell 
me what it was.” 

“ I’ll do nothing of the kind,” she said, but 
by way of recompense gave him a kiss. Then 
she suddenly announced in playful self-contra- 
diction, “ Mark, I don’t love you, a bit.” 

“ Yes, you do,” he answered with unroman- 
tic calm. 

“ No, I don’t.” 

You— do.” 

I don’t — I don’t — I don’t — I don’t ! ” 
Then at sight of him she laughed, and by way 
of penance for her falsehoods she spoke the 
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 
truth in a violent embrace. Seeing him de- 
lighted, she exclaimed with mock severity, 
“ Go away ! Go away from me. Go away ! ” 
she repeated, pushing him from her. You 
are not my Sweetheart.” 

I am,” he answered with a quiver of the lip. 

“ You are — not.” 


WHA T MARK DID. 


227 


“ Please ! ” he appealed. 

“You’re not — you’re not — you’re not — you 
— are — not ! ” 

“ Well, whether I am yours or not — you are 
mine,” answered Mark. 

Gwen’s eyes gleamed, and on his behalf as 
it were she instantly ratified that earnest 
declaration by another impulsive embrace. 
When the violence had spent itself and the 
crooning had ceased, though they were still 
in each other’s arms — she sitting, he standing 
— a dead calm of satisfied emotion came to 
them, even thought was lulled into reveries 
and dreams, words wer*e nothing, gratified ex- 
istence was everything : and so they dreamed 
until a sigh from Gwen awoke them, and 
without the utterance of a word their arms 
unlocked and they stood apart, awake in the 
world again. 

Gwen stood leaning against the window 
frame looking up the vale. Mark, seeing that 


228 -S' WEETHEAR T G WEN. 

she was unobservant, rubbed himself along the 
chest of drawers, touched the chair near it, 
rubbed himself along the wall where Uncle 
Iwan’s paper-patched glass portrait hung, 
passed the door, glanced at Gwen and quietly 
worked along the other wall until he reached 
the head of Gwen’s bed — at one time his bed, 
too ; and he asked himself, “ And why not his 
then, in those days as in the past ? ” But 
kneeling down and getting on all fours, he 
suddenly disappeared. 

Gwen looked about. He was not in sight. 
He was not behind the chest of drawers, he 
was not in the bed and she had not heard the 
room door opened. “ Mark,” she called. 

“ . . . . Yes ?” came in muffled tones from 
under the valanced bed. 

What are you doing there, you rogue ! ” 
I’m — I’m looking for that — Fve got it ! 
I’ve found it!” and he came from under the 
bed with the sixpence between his teeth. 


CHAPTER IV. 


DREAMS REALIZED. 

Mark once more returned home. He re- 
sumed a most absorbing correspondence with 
Auntie Gwen which lasted until, two years 
later, he got into a much busier office. After 
that he was so utterly wearied when he reached 
home from work, that when tea was over he 
usually sat gazing into the fire without utter- 
ing a word. 

Now and then, however, his half-roused 

thoughts wandered through the red hollows to 

Ty-Cremed. In that delightful state he wrote 

hundreds of imaginary epistles and received 

hundreds of imaginary replies. Indeed, in 

this private correspondence by reverie, Gwen 

often acted as her own postman. He gazed 

(229) 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


230 

into the red hollows of the fire — and she came 
to him. He could see her roseate fresh face : 
the bright cheeks tapering to a dimpled chin, 
the aquiline nose, the restless ruddy lips curv- 
ing into smiles and out of them again in play- 
ful talk ; he could see her wavy chestnut hair 
about her forehead and down her temples to 
her ears half-peeping from their lairs of crowd- 
ing, clustering, miniature curls ; he could see 
those vivacious blue eyes of hers looking the 
very roguery that they tried to hide ; he could 
even hear her low voice — a voice with a laugh 
in it — a voice with the tremour of affection in 
its deeper soundings of her heart; he could 
see and hear the past, and to be with even a 
mythical Gwen in the land of reverie, was 
bliss. But the sound of a foot or of a moved 
chair or of another’s voice would touch this 
spirit and make it vanish : and Mark would 
awake to aching limbs and an intense impa- 
tience with his lot. 


DREAMS REALIZED. 


231 

What, oh, what, was there in the secret in- 
ner life that he lived and told to nobody ; 
what was there within that urged him to 
strike for liberty and to cast off the bondage 
and to throw in his lot, night and day and 
for ever, at Ty-Cremed ? 

He would not care if he was fagged to 
death for Auntie Gwen. And look at the 
rides and drives, the troutlets in the stream, 
the apples in the orchard and the loft, the 
nuts in the woods and hedges, the hot pota- 
toes in cold butter-milk, the roaring wood fire 
in the bread-oven, the market day at Denbigh, 
the teas with pancakes at the farmhouses and 
the ideal afternoons on the big sofa in the big 
kitchen before a big bright fire — a sofa, a 
kitchen, and a fire, such as it was utterly im- 
possible to find at any other place in the 
whole world. 

With this dumb longing upon him he 
would go to bed early, but only to lie awake 


232 


5 WEE THEAR T G WEN. 


thinking of the bed at Ty-Cremed, of the 
stars he used to see through the skylight, and 
of Gwen blotting them out by coming in with 
her candle to say “ Good-night ” on her way 
to bed. And wearied Mark would turn on 
his side and hug the clothes in memory of 
still earlier nights — the nights of his child- 
hood — when Gwen used to fondle him and 
mingle with her subdued talk about God, 
Jesus, Angels, and Ghosts, ecstatic whispers 
about a darling, a pet, and a little sweetheart — 
whispers which she emphasised on his shoul- 
der with her tightening arm and upon his 
cheek or brow with her seeking lips. Oh, 
dreams within dreams, how vividly they hov- 
ered about the wakeful side of sleep until at 
last slumber drew them in and made them 
still more vivid, still more real ! 

And yet Mark would waken to another day 
in the busy labyrinths of the Exchange ; and 
what broker, what salesman, what apprentice, 


DREAMS REALIZED. 


233 

I wonder, suspected Mark of carrying reveries 
as well as letters and invoices about those 
courts and alleys and up those stairs ? 

* * * * * * 

In the summer of one more eventful year, 
Mark for a swift holiday of from Saturday 
night until Sunday night had his dreams real- 
ized at Ty-Cremed. 

Like a holiday on a meteor during its brief 
career down the heavens was the brief en- 
chantment of that summer Sunday. The re- 
sults were magical. His very ecstasies aged 
him. On the Saturday night, Mark was fif- 
teen. On Sunday morning, when he was on 
his way to chapel with Gwen, he became 
twenty— nay, at the turn of the farm lane 
into the road when she brought him to bay in 
front of her, and re-tied his bow and stroked 
his hair back over his ears and then walked all 
the way to chapel with her arm through his, 
he came of age, there was something of the 


234 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


man in him, joy was awake, rapture was alive, 
the book of Life was re-opened on that Sun- 
day morning at the page of Love. ’Twas 
“ Sweetheart Gwen ” in very deed. 

In the chapel he “looked on’' with Gwen, 
even though he could not read a word of 
Welsh ; but instead of reading, he leaned 
against her, and dreamed : not a dream, but 
a reality. 

At dinner when he sat at one end of the 
table and Gwen at the other, he felt compara- 
tively estranged even though Gwen, after carv- 
ing the chicken at her end, went with his 
well-filled plate to his end to see that he had 
salt, and bread, and a glass of milk — to see 
him begin, in fact, before she sat to serve 
herself. 

Felicity having changed what may be called 
her black religious gown after “ Capel ” for a 
half-secular second-best Sunday brown one, 
came to offer her services, but Gwen answer- 


DREAMS REALIZED. 


235 


ed — '' No, thank you, Felicity Robartch, we 
can manage very well by ourselves,” and looked 
over the table to Mark with such a delightfully 
inclusive “Can’t we?” that a colour came to 
Mark’s cheek, which caused Felicity to crane her 
neck to see further round his face and to say — 
“Why, he is blush his answer as red as 
Robin. And how did you like ‘ Capel’ now 
that you are older, Mark ? You play hypo- 
crite there, whatever, you Lerpool rogue ! — 
pretending Welsh aside your Auntie. / see 
you there ! It was the smile of the whole 

place if you noticed, missis He lose 

his tongue, I think. Auntie. Have you 
young gentleman ? I thought so. Well, and 
no wonders,” said Felicity, moving towards 
the back-kitchen at a sign from Gwen. “ And 
he is to go from us to-night ? Pity on him ! 
He feel it. Pity he cannot take you with 
him, missis, for I ’sure you in ‘ Capel’ he once 
seem to swallow you with his eyes.” 


236 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


Felicity !” said Gwen. 

Truth for you,” answered Felicity, and 
disappeared. 

After dinner, Gwen ^and Mark sat together 
on the big sofa — her face supported by her 
hand, while the other hand played with Mark’s 
hair as he sat on a buffet as near the sofa as 
he could get, for, alas, he was now too big to 
repeat history and get on. 

They spoke about the old days, reminding 
each other of special events. Mark asked 
Gwen if she remembered the night when their 
bed-room window was splashed with gravel 
and when she tricked Elias Lewis ; and Gwen 
withdrew her hand from Mark’s ear, and ris- 
ing, called Felicity to clear the dinner-table. 

They then went arm-in-arm through the 
brilliant quiet sunshine to the stack-yard. 
Gwen selected a comfortable place in the 
shadow of a haystack and making a couch 
there, they sat amid the odour of hay and the 


DREAMS REALIZED. 237 

animated twitters of sparrows they had dis- 
turbed. But old Nelson, the Newfoundland, 
soon scented Gwen, and when in keeping with 
the heat and quiet of the Sunday afternoon 
he lazily sought Gwen’s side, and settled down 
with his head on Gwen’s lap, and monopolised 
her caresses, to Mark the dog became a rival. 
Mark tried to get his rival away by raising an 
alarm of “ Cats !— Cats ! ’’—but the dog gave 
Mark a long, slow, brown-eyed glance of dis- 
paragement, which made Gwen laugh in Nel- 
son’s favour, and Nelson wagged his tail 
among the hay and closed his eyes as if to 
close Mark completely outside of the private 
and confidential joy that existed between him 
and Gwen. 

Nelson fell asleep, and Mark felt that he 
was more fully in possession of Gwen again. 
Her coveted attentions were not divided ; and 
merely because she placed her hand on his 
knee and spoke encouragingly about his woik 


238 SWEETHEART GWEN. 

and about being industrious, good, and 
through all things faithful and honest, tears 
sprang through his premature manhood to his 
eyes : and Gwen, perceiving this, put her arm 
around his neck, and while his head rested 
upon her breast her cheek gently pressed the 
crown of his head, and caressingly moved to 
and fro to soothe the pain of his joy. 

Gwen shortly transferred from her pocket 
to her lap some hazel-nuts. She cracked two 
of them with her own white teeth and gave 
them to Mark. But to Mark, just then, there 
was more sweetness even in the shell of one 
that he cracked for her than in the kernels 
she had given to him ; but when Gwen bit 
off half of the kernel he gave to her and 
pressed the other half between his lips, why 
it had a most delicious flavour of her in it : 
and he wanted her arm about his neck again, 
her hand stroking his hair up from his brows 
again, her cheek caressing the crown of his 


DREAMS REALIZED. 


239 


head, and he moved nearer by way of invita- 
tion. To his great joy it was accepted. 

At Gwen’s request he told her about his 
masters, and the ways of the Cotton business 
on ’Change. But he spoke with the forced 
warmth of one who has grown cold in a situ- 
ation during the period of a month’s notice to 
quit it. He confessed that he would rather, 
very much rather — live in Wales. 

Gwen laughingly replied — “ Nonsense ! ” 

That hurt his very soul. He snatched up a 
straw of hay, chewed it into pulp, and com- 
pletely forgetting himself, swallowed it. “ But 
— I — would,” he murmured. 

“ Really ? ” asked Gwen. “ What an idea ! ” 

“Really. I’d be happier. I’d work hard, 
.1 would, if I could come here. I’d do — any- 
thing ! ” 

“ But would your father and mother allow 
you ?” 

“ If they only would ; if they only would !” 


5 WEETHEAR T G WEN. 


240 

he answered, and for the first time this visit, he 
voluntarily put his arm around her waist ; and 
her hand met his and firmly held it to its bliss. 

Was Sweetheart Gwen really more lovely 
than she used to be ? he asked and re-asked 
himself in the sunshine and the hay. Was 
there really more endearment in the blue of 
her eyes and the tremour of her voice, or was 
he more subject to the spell ? Had she verily 
more warmth in her veins or had he ? or had 
both ? for if only her hair touched his brow, 
his blood answered the tingling call, ani set 
his cheeks and all his frame aflame. 

After an almost sacred tea, Gwen and 
Mark went up-stairs and sat at her bed-room 
window. Their joint memories seemed to 
desire history to repeat itself, and influenced 
them to recall the past by place, thought, 
word, and deed. 

Going to the chest of drawers Gwen asked 
Mark if he still collected foreign stamps. 


DREAMS REALIZED. 


241 


Mark said, “ A little ; not like I used to do. 
Why? Do you collect? I’ll give you all 
mine if you like.” 

Gwen did not answer, but tore the stamps 
off four envelopes, and gave them to him. 

One United States ; one Canada, and two 
Australias,” muttered Mark and asked Gwen 
if she could spare one of the old envelopes to 
put them in. 

Again Gwen did not answer, but instead of 
giving an envelope she tore a piece of paper 
from that which lined her drawer and told him 
to put the stamps in that ; and they moved to 
go down-stairs. 

As they passed the wall on the left Mark 
was inclined to halt to view Uncle I wan’s 
glass portrait, but Gwen with the very gentlest 
of pressures upon his arm influenced him to 
pass it. 

When they reached the door, however, 

Gwen, as if because she had passed the por- 
16 


242 5 WEETHEAR T G WEN. 

trait in that avoiding way, returned to it and 
drew Mark with her. They stood looking up 
at it, Gwen muttering, Dear, dear Iwan ! 
God — bless him!” And suddenly she bent 
her head and turned away, weeping in her 
hands. Mark went to her and then she bent 
over him and sobbed on his shoulder. With 
a quick, impulsive, passionate breaking away 
from Mark, she resolutely returned to the 
drawer, took out the four envelopes from 
which the stamps had been torn, and, striking 
a match, burned the envelopes and their long 
letters one by one in the washhand basin. 

They are done with, now,” she muttered 
watching the flickers. “ You do not specially 
want to keep those stamps ? ” she asked Mark, 
and in a moment they were out of Mark’s 
pocket and curling to destruction in the black 
ashes of paper. 

“ Do you know who sent them ? ” she 
quired. 


en- 


DREAMS REALIZED. 


243 


“No,” answered Mark. 

“ He once gave you sixpence.” 

“ Oh — him ! ” 

“ Yes. Ah, me ! . . . . But come, Mark, 
my dear lad, your time is getting very short 
— the gig will soon come ! — don’t let us spend 
the last few minutes in the house, like this,” 
she said going down-stairs and reaching a 
broad-brimmed straw hat from behind the 
staircase door. 

Putting her arm through his she led him 
out and they strolled to the stack-yard gate 
where they leaned looking towards the rising 
moon and up to the increasing stars. The 
sudden sound of the horse being led from the 
stable sent Gwen’s arm around Mark’s neck 
and his quick arms around her waist. She 
bent and crooned a passionate throe of affec- 
tion as she pressed him to her breast ; and 
they moved to follow the gig to the door. 

When Mark was on the gig with the driver. 


244 SWEETHEART GWEN. 

Gwen mounted the iron step to say “Good- 
bye.” 

She, however, decided to continue standing 
on the gig step and keep Mark company down 
the farm lane as far as the main road, and say 
“ Good bye ” there. 

At the main road, Gwen said she would 
just go as far as “ the forge ” (the smithy)— it 
was a beautifully clear night and she would 
enjoy the walk back. 

At “ the forge ” the driver pulled up, but 
Gwen said, “ Make room, Mark — I will come 
all the way!” She took Mark’s seat and he 
stood leaning upon her, with her arm about 
him and his face against hers ; and the deep 
double kiss that she gave him he has in his 
lips to this day. 

******** 

Two months after that moonlight drive, 
when Mark reached home one night, there 
was the strangest news in all the world for 


DREAMS REALIZED. 245 

him. Auntie Gwen had disappeared ; she 
had left the farm. Some said to America, 
some to Australia, some to New Zealand ; 
nobody really knew where. She had gone, 
and without a word for a soul — not even for 
him. 


END OF PART II. 




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A FINAL CONFESSION. 


I AM now like a guilty biographer brought 
to bay — to autobiographical bay, for Mark is 
no other than the boy I used to be. Nor has 
that boy Mark ceased to exist. He is still 
living within me with his special knowledge 
of Ty-Cremed and Sweetheart Gwen. He 
haunts me, and not like a conventional ghost, 
outside, but within. He is as faithful as my 
shadow. More faithful. He follows where 
shadows cannot follow — he follows me in the 
dark, he follows me into sleep, into dreams, 
and sometimes wakens me out of them to 
twit me with being a man — and a bachelor — 
and not in love. 

This is cruel of him, in view of the facts ; 

very cruel, considering that in this respect I 

(249) 


250 


SWEETHEART GWEN, 


am only what he made me at Ty-Cremed, and 
it is very hard for me, who never stayed there, 
to be taunted with the results of his amorous 
visits. He ought to remember first causes. 
He began it. It was he who told me all about 
Sweetheart Gwen. I, Markham, the man, 
never saw her in my life. I only know of her 
as of a dream. And I love and cherish that 
dream with an indwelling consciousness of 
Destiny, the result of his own fidelity : so he 
should not twit me. We are both in the 
same Fate. If he has not met with his ideal 
Gwen in latter years, no more have I. If I 
cannot summon Sweetheart Gwen from mod- 
ern Wales, the moonlights and the stars, for 
him, he cannot do so for me ; if he is lonely 
in farm kitchens, dairies, orchards, and stack- 
yards of the mind, so am I. But there ! — I 
do not wish to pick a family quarrel with him, 
and especially over his ideal and mine, dear 
Sweetheart Gwen. 


A FINAL CONFESSION. 


25 


******* 

But he really does play the strangest pranks 
with me. I assure you that at certain periods 
I have to live his life more than I live my own. 
I might as well try to stop five spots of rain 
with four fingers as try to stop Mark’s ideas 
acting upon mine. It sounds ridiculous, I 
know ; but there the despotism is. He, a boy, 
has the power of influencing my Present, but 
I, a man, am powerless to influence his Past. 
I am aging — I feel it — but he is irrevocably 
young, a perennial youth with the most con- 
servative amatory emotions. True, he allows 
me a little latitude with my thoughts ; but 
hardly any with my feelings. I have often tried 
to educate him up to a more contemporaneous 
kind of interest in people and things, and 
especially in the opposite sex, but in vain. 
He resists me, he is successful at it, then he 
dominates over both thought and feeling, and 
I find myself idly thinking of the past, when 


S WEE THEAR T G WEN, 


252 

I ought to be active in the present. He takes 
me into the country when to all appearances 
I am in town; he transports me to the Vale 
of Clywd, even when I am on ’Change with 
every outward indication that I am standing 
there ready to strike the best bargain I can for 
Wigley Bentham & Co. 

I often ask myself, What have I to do with 
Mark at twelve and fifteen, and what has he 
to do with me at thirty-five? He takes life 
sweetly, as if the World and everything on it 
were young, as if Love were indeed a Cupid, 
and Death very much too far off to be under- 
stood. On the other hand, I am now inclined 
to think of the age of things, and especially 
of the age of myself, and to now and then 
dream of the future. But he will not let me. 

Nor is any time or place sacred to him. I 
may be in a quiet corner of the Liverpool 
Exchange News Room, reading for business 
purposes, the state of “ Manchester Shirtings ” 


A FINAL CONFESSION, 253 

— nevertheless, he comes buzzing and bobbing 
inside the cells of my brain like an internal, 
eternal, infernal fly. He wants to take me to 
certain sunbeams stored slantwards in the 
memory from a certain day in North Wales ; 
and, if only for two moments, between one 
price and another, I go. Candidly, I like the 
aerial trip ; and I read the next quotation with 
quite a feeling of fresh Welsh air. 

Take another case. I may be on the verge 
of forming an estimate of the market value of 
some long-stapled Egyptian, drawn out be- 
tween my fore-fingers and thumbs— lo, in the 
minutest miniature, as if he had leapt out of 
my finger-ends, he dances upon the shining 
silken tight-rope that I hold, and for a mo- 
ment— a mere instant— the cotton staple is 
not cream-coloured, but russet gold, the col- 
our and gleam of the hair of Sweetheart 
Gwen. 

At other times, I cannot go up certain first 


254 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


floors or along certain ground floors, it may 
be to secure two hundred bales of Surats before 
the lot is sold, without he button-holes me, 
from within, to recall some hand-rail escapade 
suggestive of the monkey on the stick. Does 
it matter to him if the lot is sold? Not at 
all, and for his own amusement he almost in- 
duces me to slide astride down the hand-rail 
in memory of good old times. If I turn into 
Brown’s Buildings I am booked for quite a 
series of reminiscences — from the top floor 
where his “ first office ” is, to the basement 
where the morning heap of office sweepings 
lies. Let him but catch the dank dusty odour 
of that heap and he tells me how he used to 
go moling in it for envelopes with foreign 
stamps on. For his satisfaetion, even in these 
days I am tempted to go down there for the fas- 
cination of finding a rare “ India ” or Ceylon.” 

In another direction I am simply victimized. 
I am continually buying roasted chestnuts and 


A FINAL CONFESSION. 255 

new season’s wallnuts. I am quite sure that 
/ could do without them, but I have a palate 
within a palate, and the inner one is Mark’s. 
The sight of the black spark-lit chestnut husks 
or a waft of their aromatic fumes sets his 
yearning palate to act upon mine — and there 
is no harmony of tastes between us until I 
have bought him his old, old pennyworth. 
Fellow salesmen ask me how I can consume 
so many, but of course I cannot explain that 
I am only a kind of cage for an omnivorous 
monkey with a weakness that way. I have to 
bear their remarks and smile. Mark hears 
them and laughs. 

Very frequently has that laugh of his com- 
mitted me to an awkward situation. I have, 
for example, stood at an Exchange luncheon 
bar along with other members of the staple — 
I have stood there eating my shrimp and lob- 
ster sandwich of little more cubic and super- 
ficial measurement than a lady’s visiting card. 


256 SWEETHEART GWEN. 

when Mark quite suddenly would contrast 
that effeminate sandwich with the masculine 
slabs of bread and butter of his period, and 
deride my acquired daintiness with a chuckle 
that would partly succeed in escaping through 
my mastication. “ What are you laughing at, 
Brockleton?” a friend will ask. “At me?” 
“Or at me?” “Or me}'' one or two will 
playfully enquire. But what can I say ? I 
cannot tell them that I am possessed — of a 
devil ; or that I am haunted, that I am a man 
with the ghost of a boy on the spiral staircase 
of my being. I have to hook on my laugh at 
the most convenient bit of humour about. 
Sometimes there is no humour to hook on to. 
Then I have to invent some. And with what 
result ? I now have an exacting reputation of 
seeing the grotesque side of things. 

Mark has another vagary. He likes to trap 
me into conversation with, say a railway pas- 
senger, when I do not desire or intend it ; and 


A FINAL CONFESSION 257 

he has a very sly way of bringing it about. 
Though the train is going at the rate of fifty 
miles an hour, he has a persistent habit of 
using my eyes to look at the fields, woods, 
and farmsteads. It is useless to protest. 
Even if I turn my face from the window, he 
insists upon having his full allowance of land- 
scape — even though he has to take the rest 
out in reverie. Indeed, if I will not turn to 
the fields, he turns the fields to me. He passes 
landscape slides into the lantern of my mind, 
and behold, as if by truly magic lantern, up 
come the most pleasant associations from the 
past. I grow to like the effects. I give my- 
self up to them. They act upon my feelings 
— so much so that I again look through the 
carriage window and impulsively say to my 
fellow passenger, “The country looks splen- 
did ! That’s a fine crop of oats they are cut- 
ting out there. It takes me back to when I 

was a boy in Wales.” 

17 


258 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


The passenger looks at me as if that is sus- 
piciously familiar for a beginning, and leaves 
me to fight out the stranded impulse with 
Mark. 

******* 

But in nothing is Mark so despotic as in 
our joint dealings with the opposite sex. In 
a certain mood of envious discontent that 
sometimes comes over him, he frantically de- 
sires those unrestrained caresses which young 
women bestow upon boys but studiously with- 
hold from men. I have tried to convey to 
him the view of Society upon the point, but 
it is useless ; he pays no attention ; he tries to 
act upon his impulse as against my common 
sense, and I have felt him so jealous of a 
kissed and cuddled boy, that I have thought 
he would jump clean out of my skin and de- 
mand his rights, or take them. 

When he is in this mood and longs for the 
old freedom that he had at Ty-Cremed, it is 


A FINAL CONFESSION. 259 

absolutely dangerous to take him into com- 
pany. In violent remembrance of his delight- 
ful freedom with responsive beauty then, he 
protests against the decorous inactivity of my 
manhood, now, and thrusts his short arms as 
far as he can into my longer ones as if he 
would have both of us conjointly embrace 
some lovely creature in bigamous memory of 
some one else. It’s a fact. He has some- 
times so worked upon my feelings at the sight 
of a lady lounging on a couch with her arms 
supporting her head and her eyes courting 
confidences, that it has been the greatest 
struggle to keep my arms in good behaviour or 
my speech from em.otional nonsense. On a 
few rare occasions he has so mesmerised me 
with his reveries that I have fallen into a kind 
of trance — I have surrendered to the eyes — 
and I have confided. Confided what, for- 
sooth ? The fact that— that— I was some- 
times haunted by an intense wish that I were 


26 o -S ' WEETHEAR T G WEN. 

a boy again ! And with what result ? Why, 
that I have been wakened from the mesmeric 
state by the laugh of the coquette. She has 
looked at me as if I were not mature, and has 
encouraged the attentions of a neighbouring 
suit of clothes which, to all appearances, had a 
fully evolved man in it. 

But how could I fully explain to her ? I 
should only be smiled at the more. The se- 
cret difficulty with me is, to keep in check a 
pertinacious lad who has the most whimsical 
patriotism on the question of love. I assure 
you it is most awkward. He jeers me if I 
am reserved ; and he balks me if I am familiar. 
If I stand aloof from womanhood in bacheloric 
resignation to a lonely fate, he frets, he de- 
mands his rights. On the other hand, if in 
momentary forgetfulness of him and his, I 
even turn over the Marriage Service with 
prospective dreams on my own account, he 
protests; and if I cultivate a platonic friend- 


A FINAL CONFESSION 261 

ship where there is the slightest risk of it ripen- 
ing into something else, he gets into such a 
passion that he,' from the inside, actually 
smacks my face with my own conscience — 
smacks it until the platonic friend, with quite 
an erroneous notion, twinklingly enquires, 
What makes you blush so, Mr. Brockleton ? ” 
If, at the highly susceptible age of twenty- 
one, I looked rather admiringly at, say, my 
friend Bouverie’s sister (which sometimes hap- 
pened) Mark would internally growl — “ Now 
then ! Eyes off ! ” and deal my heart a thump 
that made it palpitate. Even when (should I 
confess it ?), even when I have quite con- 
sciously utilised some very beautiful creature 
as nothing else but living, smiling, conversing 
memoranda by which my reveries could the 
more vividly lead their way to Sweetheart 
Gwen, Mark has been jealous, and has tried to 
give the creature a moment’s notice to quit 
the illegal tenancy of my eyes. 


262 


SWEETHEART GWEAT. 


He has shadowed my speech, too, like a 
detective. Bouverie used to give me rather 
emphatic helps, hints, and illustrations, to call 
his sister by her Christian name. Once I ven- 
tured — I actually called her Florrie — mercy 1 
Mark almost choked me with the delicious 
morsel, and I was not free from a feeling of 
suffocation until I restored internal peace by 
returning to my customary use of “ Miss.” 
Bouverie looked daggers, Florrie looked as if 
I had removed out of her immediate neigh- 
bourhood ; but Mark performed an exultant 
leap and congratulated me upon a narrow es- 
cape from, I understood him to mean, Bou- 
verie’s deep designs. 

Even at Christmas time, when, once a year, 
by virtue of the mistletoe, my cooped impulses 
had a certain liberty, he could not leave me 
alone. Just when I had seized both the op- 
portunity and, say, Bouverie’s sister, Mark 
with Sweetheart Gwen as a spectral ally, would 


A FINAL CONFESSION, 263 

seem to place along my lips a phantom slip of 
non-conducting kiss-proof tissue paper— that 
was the sensation — and with what befooling, 
unsatisfying results those experienced will 
know. What Bouverie’s sister thought of 
the results I am not aware ; but I used to 
think that she (and Bouverie as well) was ex- 
ceedingly ecstatic about very little. / felt no 
thrill. I was greatly disappointed. Indeed, 
it is a fact, and a very trying fact, that since 
the deep double kiss which Mark received 
during the farewell drive that Sunday night — 
a rapturous caress which has come down to 
me more like a tradition or an incident of ro- 
mance I, Markham Brockleton, have not 
experienced one solitary caress of like charac- 
ter either in quantity or quality — not one !— 
and I attribute the fact to the interference of 
Mark and the approval of that interference by 
Swee — .... No ; I will not complain ; I 
will not blame. After all, this old feeling of 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


264 

discontent has, waned. To recall it seems 
like giving the ancient history of my younger 
young manhood, when love wanted some tan- 
gible response to its call ; when, not having 
Mark’s and my own ideal to kiss, I hazarded 
a kiss with reality: and, alas, sank away from 
the contact ; disappointed, dejected, preferring 
Mark’s reiterated account of his ecstatic expe- 
rience in the past. 

It was during this period that I made an 
amatory mistake. How I came to so miscal- 
culate my sensations, I cannot say. How, 
with such a watchful authority as Mark within 
me, I was allowed to mistake the symptoms, 
is a mystery. However, I did mistake them. 

I thought I had fallen in love. For some in- 
explicable reason — unless, indeed, they did so 
to prove to me the futility of my own quest — 
both Mark .... and Sweetheart Gwen 
.... allowed me to enjoy the illusion. It 
led me to believe that at last their spell 


A FINAL CONFESSION 265 

over me was at an end, and that I was 
free. 

The other victim of the illusion was a very 
rosebud of a being : as bright as morning and 
as warm as noon. Her name was even Gwen- 
doline, she was even a daughter of Wales, she 
even had blue eyes, and they lured me like dis- 
tant dells when the hyacinth blooms. For 
two weeks I was all worship. It was not the 
month of February, but I sent her a Valentine 
— a present — and for three days in the third 
week I looked in a certain jeweller’s window 
every morning and evening as I passed, to see 
if a certain engagement ring was still unsold. 
What held me from entering that shop on the 
fourth day of that third week ? I often won- 
der, but I feel solemnly grateful that some in- 
visible hand of Providence did hold me ; and 
how very thankful lam, for her sake as well 
as my own, that I never really proposed. It 
was more like a private proposal to myself 


266 SWEETHEART GWEN. 

that I should propose ; but something told 
me, and tells me yet, that the idea was a mis- 
take. But, poor gentle soul, she did hear me 
say that I loved her; and the very instant 
that I said it, I knew for the first time that I 
did not ! It seemed as if the words dispelled 
the illusion and restored my vision, for when 
I looked at her face again, smiling though it 
was, it did not make the same appeal to me or 
hold the same sway over me ; it was not quite 
so beautiful, not so winning ; and compared 
with a face which Mark called from afar just 
then, it became as blank to me as a sandy 
beach that has no sun-lit pools with the blue 
sky in them. She had not the electric power 
of love over me, after all. 

I said “Good-night” to her as though I 
were going direct to the scaffold, and if I 
think of the incident I feel as if I am still be- 
ing hanged for it, though as far as I can tell I 
am in no way responsible. I did not fully ex- 


A FINAL CONFESSION. 267 

plain to her. How could I ? Her friends, so 
I hear, even yet think that I trifled with her. 
But she does not. Nor did I trifle with her. 
By no means. Up to the moment in which 
I spoke I was sincere. The hard condition 
was that I had to be sincere after, as well. 

I was twenty-two when that happened, and 
much has occurred since then. I have what 
the world calls “got on.” My goods and 
chattels and the balance at the bank have in- 
creased, and yet I live in that state in which, 
according to a high authority, it is not good 
for a man to live. But / live alone simply 
because my old friend Bouverie, who used to 
share apartments with me, is married — and 
with the usual result : he has joined the ranks 
of Providence’s agents in advance to preach 
the blessings of matrimony to the unblessed 
souls who are single. I rarely go to his pretty 
little house but what, in the presence of his 
wife, he gives me a connubial punch in the 


268 


5 WEETHEAR T G WEN, 


very place, I am sure, where the rib of Adam 
was taken away whereof to make Eve, and 
ridicules me for not entering Paradise and 
making a little garden of Eden of my own. 
His wife (nursing their third baby) abets the 
assault and aids the ridicule. 

She playfully asks if I will put myself in her 
experienced hands — and for an instant she 
poises her head, and turns up her eyes, and 
smiles exactly in the manner of her pretty 
cousin Jess. As an answer to that I take up 
their eldest little girl — my god-child — hide 
my face between her face and shoulder and 
tell Mr. and Mrs. Bouverie that it is of no use 
experimenting with me, for I am a hopeless 
case ; but they only laugh their disbelief of any 
such thing — and Jess comes in to supper. 

Sometimes Mr. and Mrs. Bouverie give 
parties. I am invited. I go. I pass through 
all the stages of enjoyment, and even dance ; 
but I wonder what my partners would say if 


A FINAL CONFESSION. 269 

I told them that I dance under false pretences, 
that I do not dance for dancing’s sake, or for 
their sakes, but that my arm with set purpose 
deliberately uses their maidenly waists as ma- 
terial mediums — bodily mediums if you like — 
to recall the delights of embracing some one 
who has long since become spiritual to me. 
Yes, I wonder what they would say ; but 
frankly it is only on this understanding that I 
can dance with any comfort of conscience at 
all. 

After a few dances my hostess is markedly 
kind to me. I cannot help but note that she 
sits chatting with me longer and more confi- 
dentially than with others ; that she somewhat 
specially orders the maid to bring the coffee 
my way j and that she leaves me to be affable 
with her pretty cousin Jess. \—\—am 
affable, but oh ! knowing what I do know I 
feel sly, insincere, almost mean, and am grieved 
that I cannot — that I dare not. I behold 


2/0 


SWEETHEART GWEN. 


beautiful gentle Jess as something pathetically 
unaware of how far she stands outside the 
lines of my destiny. My thoughts travel, my 
feelings wander, I lose grip of my topic ; I 
feel myself forcing the conversation with arti- 
ficial vigour, and yet am helpless. I am as if 
under a ban; Jess’s eyes wander; her smiles 
flag; she uses her fan, she says “Yes,” and 
“ No,” and “ Indeed ?” as if in struggling so- 
liloquy ; she is confused, annoyed ; and yet 
she gracefully begs to be excused as she desires 
to speak to her friend Maud, who is leaving 
the room. She goes. I rise and lean against 
the mantel-piece studying a water-colour draw- 
ing which I have often studied under similar 
circumstances before, or I look at the nearest 
album of views which I have looked at until 
the photographs seem to possess eyes and 
look at me, or I stroll out upon their little 
terrace and walk beneath the stars, a social 
failure. 


A FINAL CONFESSION. 


271 


When I see Jess again, her cheeks smile, 
hut her lips and eyes do not, and I know 
that she knows that it is not to be. 

Bouverie’s sister Florrie is also married, now, 
and to a very nice fellow, too. Following 
Bouverie’s example and as if to get me as near 
the delights of paternity as they can, they also 
have made me a god-father — god-father to 
their son and lieir ; and to complicate matters 
as far as I am concerned, they have called him 
Mark. 

Mr. and Mrs. Brooks (Florrie’s new name) 
also give parties ; parties with a purpose. In- 
deed — if I may say so of friends of whom I 
am very fond — between these two pairs of 
happy couples I have a very hard time of it. 
They not only try to playfully ridicule me into 
bliss, but they try to supper and dance me into 
it, and they continually speak as if I am 
hourly missing something ecstatic ; as if I 
am momentarily deprived of incommunicable 


2/2 


5 IV£E THEAR T G WEN. 


raptures; as if they knew certain entranc- 
ing secrets of life which I shall never 
know unless I go the one sure way to find 
them. 

It is strange ; very strange. They are mar- 
ried ; I am not, and they speak as if I can 
help it. I cannot, and be true to impressions 
which I am not responsible for having. 
Whether they can understand it or not, my 
state is as inevitable for me as theirs is for 
them. I cannot revoke my past. I feel as if 
a long, long time ago and in other scenes I had 
been affianced in anticipation, and by proxy — 
by Mark. Men like Bouverie, household 
men, domesticated men, men with the lady’s 
easy chair filled and with more pairs of feet on 
the hearthrug than their own, may call out 
“ Nonsense ! ” “ Childish ! ” “ Sentimental ! ” 
But do not judge rashly. One nature cannot 
always fully know the possibilities of another; 
and especially in the mystery of love. 


A FINAL CONFESSION. 


273 

I speak sincerely when I say that the far-off 
spell under which I live is not nonsense, nor 
is it childish, nor yet sentimental ; nor is it an 
influence within the power of my own control. 
To try and rule these old emotions as out of 
date, is like trying to rule the ancient stars of 
heaven out of their modern spheres. I can 
no more rid myself of Sweetheart Gwen by 
looking upon another being, than a mari- 
gold can change its colour by looking upon 
a rose. I cannot dethrone her. She rules 
— the imperial empress of all the visible 
and invisible world of love. She comes 
— and in coming makes me ineligible for 
another. 

Whatever the local conditions may be, 
she can admit herself into my presence. 
No servants, hosts, or guests, can shut her 
out. However crowded the room or table 
there is always room for her : and be- 
tween me and the next lady. She is never 
18 


274 SWEETHEART GWEN. 

invited with me, but she does not stand 
on ceremony, she is no slave to formalities; 
if I go she is sure to be there to meet me. 
Nor is she subject to material conditions. 
If all the doors are closed, she comes 
through the walls; sometimes through a 
picture — landscape or portrait — sometimes 
through a song or sonata ; and sometimes even 
through the eyes of a lady I see, or on the 
tone of the voice of another with whom I am 
conversing. 

Sometimes I feel as though she had never 
existed in the flesh : only as a paragon in the 
dreamy distances of the mind. At other 
times she is so vivid that the sensation is re- 
versed : she it is who lives, and I am only like 
a thought thinking itself towards her, nearer 
and nearer, and when the thought approaches 
so closely that it calls me to the life of the 
flesh again, I have a longing to journey some- 
where — anywhere — everywhere — in search of 


A FINAL CONFESSION. 


275 


a completeness of life in a life precisely like 
hers. 

Thus am I ruled — over-ruled — and I would 
not have it otherwise. It is an exquisite 
thraldom of the soul, and the very angels of 
Heaven seem to witness it and send greetings 
of encouragement, and the most delightful 
earthly aids to be faithful. The mere names 
of “Gwen” and “Wales” are secret calls. 
Whatever I am thinking or doing, at the sight 
or sound of them I halt and yield my thoughts, 
like souls at the sound of the Ave Maria. 
The word “ Madam,” used in any sense what- 
ever, brings to my spirit the sound of a pet 
mare’s hoofs with beauteous Gwen upon its 
back. The lowing of cattle at twilight gives 
me an urgent yearning to be wooed and won 
precisely as of yore ; every sweetbriar is imbued 
with the odour of her spirit to link the 
thoughts, the feelings, the very passions molt- 
en with love, in an unalterable fidelity to their 


2/6 ^ WEETHEAR T G WEN. 

source. All caresses are only performed sym- 
bols of her caresses ; all kisses the mere similes 
of hers. All love songs are vague abstractions 
unless I think of her. Think of her and every 
expression strikes home to the home of 
warmth and gives verve to the imprisoned 
passion that is faithful and true, and believes 
and waits. 

What does it all mean ? ” I ask of my very 
fidelity. Has my individual nature, has Na- 
ture as a whole, some clear purpose in view 
which I cannot yet see, and in which I am 
nevertheless to have faith ? Is there a land of 
promise, a time of promise, where and when 
this far-off beginning of Love shall be resumed 
and perfected ? For love longs in me — longs 
as I fancy migrating birds must long when at 
sea they behold a mirage of meadow which 
they come to discover is not land, but a dream- 
like presage of it, and then sing forward on 
hopeful wing. Is Memory a mirage ? Am I 


A FINAL CONIESSION, 277 

to go forward into Life until I set foot on the 
fully-realised fair land where the fair ideal 
awaits me with the beauty that was Sweet- 
heart Gwen’s, and the rapturous love that was 
hers and mine ? 

Mark tells me that I must. 


THE END. 


BY THE AUTHOR OF SWEETHEART GWENT 


DORRIE. 

BY WILLIAM TIREBUCK. 

Author of “St. Margaret,” “Sweetheart Gwen,” Etc. 


Second Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth, $1.50. 


“ A really notable novel. Dramatic and profoundly pathetic. A Psychologi- 
cal study of great value. ” — Graphic. 

“Mr. Tirebuck is a novelist of undoubted courage and fertiluy of imagina- 
tion. The story is interesting beyond all question. He unquestionably knows 
how to draw a picture.” — Athenceuvi. 

“‘Dorrie’ is an extremely touching and realistic picture of Liverpool life 
Mr. Tirebuck writes vigorously, and his story is certainly one of profound human 
interest.”— G. Barnett Smith in The Academy. 

^ “ Mr. Tirebuck has the root of the matter in him. Dorrie is really a strong 
piece of work— a decidedly interesting story.” — Gpectafor. 

“Mr. Tirebuck has a real gift of story-telling to begin with. And he has 

other greater qnahties than that His latest novel possesses a broad human 

interest as a really imaginative study of life.”— Richard Le Gallienne in The 


“ This story possesses unusual powers of attraction, and-gives unmistakable 
evidence of genius.” — Manchester Examiner. 

“For \yhat Mr. Tirebuck, in the exercise of his splendid faculty, has given us 
we can only be truly grateful. Dorrie Holt is a study in the feminine that by its 
delicacy, its sincerity, and its darimq must move the admiration of every one with 
an eye to fine literature. .... Alack ! here I am nearly at the end of my allot- 
ted space, and 1 have not said one-quarter of what was in my mind to write when 
I first oegan to write. I meant to give you some idea of Mr. Tirebuck’s manner 
in the comic vein, which is excellent ; of his fi. .e handling of simile and metaphor, 
and his brilliant analysis of thought and motive, of his remarkable powers of 
minute and vivid descnptmn. For the mere literaiy style of this striking book I 
have nothing but unqualified praise.”— “ Modus ” in IVit and Wisdom. 

“ We are glad to welcome ‘ Dorrie’ from the hand which gave us *‘St. Mar- 
pret, and winch will, we hope, give us many more girl-port rats, for Mr. Tire- 
buck IS particularly happy in his delineation of women. The ever present shadow 
of a great sin gives a touch of Greek tragedy of restless fate to the story ”— .s«r- 
rey Advei't^ser. 

“A story of no little originality.”— 

“ Real power and originality.”— Weekly. 

“Should ultimately place Mr. Tirebuck in the front xzxiiC'— Yorkshire Post 

■ “ ’ powerful doscrlpfion. Dorrie herself 

s a wonderful stuoy. A bool; full of power and passion, and worth hundreds of 
the milk-and-water stuff which many people read ”— ^ muuieas oi 

•' I—--*...™ 

London and New York: Longmans, Green, & Co. 


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